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DEPOSITED BY THE
LINONIAN AND BROTHERS LIBRARY

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE

THE SEA
AND THE JUNGLE

BY
H. M. TOMLINSON

NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & CO.

Printed in Great Britain
by Turnbull &> Shears, Edinburgh

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE.
Being the narrative of the voyage of the tramp
steamer Capella from Swansea to Para in the Brazils,
and thence 2000 miles along the forests of the
Amazon and Madeira Rivers to the San Antonio
Falls; afterwards returning to Barbados for orders,
and going by way of Jamaica to Tampa in Florida,
where she loaded for home. Done in the years
1909 and 1910.
DEDICATED TO THOSE WHO DID NOT GO.

The author is indebted to the editors of the English
Review, the Pall Mall Magazine, the Morning Leader,
and the Yorkshire Observer, for permission to incor
porate such parts of this narrative as appeared first
in their publications.

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE

Though it is easier, and perhaps far better, not to
begin at all, yet if a beginning is made it is there
that most care is needed. Everything is inherent
in the genesis. So I have to record the simple genesis
of this affair as a winter morning after rain. There
was more rain to come. The sky was waterlogged
and the grey ceiling, overstrained, had sagged and
dropped to the level of the chimneys. If one of them
had pierced it ! The danger was imminent.
That day was but a thin solution of night. You
know those November mornings with a low, corpse-
white east where the sunrise should be, as though the
day were still-born. Looking to the dayspring, there
is what we have waited for, there the end of our hope,
prone and shrouded. This morning of mine was such
a morning. The world was very quiet, as though it
were exhausted after tears. Beneath a broken gutter-
spout the rain (all the night had I listened to its
monody) had discovered a nest of pebbles in the path
of my garden in a London suburb. It occurs to you
at once that a London garden, especially in winter,
should have no place in a narrative which tells of the
sea and the jungle. But it has much to do with it.
It is part of the heredity of this book. It is the
essenee of this adventure of mine that it began on

2 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
the kind of day which so commonly occurs for both
of us in the year's assortment of days. My garden,
on such a morning, is a necessary feature of the
narrative, and much as I should like to skip it and
get to sea, yet things must be taken in the proper
order, and the garden comes first. There it was :
the blackened dahlias, the last to fall, prone in the
field where death had got all things under his feet.
My pleasaunce was a dark area of soddened relics ;
the battalions of June were slain, and their bodies
in the mud. That was the prospect in life I had.
How was I to know the Skipper had returned from
the tropics ? Standing in the central mud, which
also was black, surveying that forlorn end to devoted
human effort, what was there to tell me the Skipper
had brought back his tramp steamer from the lands
under the sun ? I knew of nothing to look forward
to but December, with January to follow. What
should you and I expect after November, but the
next month of winter? Should the cultivators of
London backs look for adventures, even though
they have read old Hakluyt ? What are the Americas
to us, the Amazon and the Orinoco, Barbadoes and
Panama, and Port Royal, but tales that are told?
We have never been nearer to them, and now know
we shall never be nearer to them, than that hill in
our neighbourhood which gives us a broad prospect
of the sunset. There is as near as we can approach.
Thither we go and ascend of an evening, like Moses,
except for our pipe. It is all the escape vouchsafed
us. Did we ever know the chain to give ? The
chain has a certain length— we know it to a link 
to that ultimate link, the possibilities of which we

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 3
never strain. The mean range of our chain, the
office and the polling booth. What a radius ! Yet
it cannot prevent us ascending that hill which looks,
with uplifted and shining brow, to the far Vague
country whence comes the last of the light, at
dayfall. It is necessary for you to learn that on my way to
catch the 8.35 that morning — it is always the 8.35 —
there came to me no premonition of change. No
portent was in the sky but the grey wrack. I saw
the hale and dominant gentleman, as usual, who
arrives at the station in a brougham drawn by two
grey horses. He looked as proud and arrogant as
ever, for his face is as a bull's. He had the usual
bunch of scarlet geraniums in his coat, and the
stationmaster assisted him into an apartment, and
his footman handed him a rug ; a routine as stable
as the hills, this. If only the solemn footman
would, one morning, as solemnly as ever, hurl that
rug at his master, with the umbrella to crash after
it ! One could begin to hope then. There was the
pale girl in black who never, between our suburb and
the city, lifts her shy brown eyes, benedictory as they
are at such a time, from the soiled book of the local
public library, and whose umbrella has lost half its
handle, a china nob. (I think I will write this book
for her.) And there were all the others who catch
that train, except the young fellow with the cough.
Now and then he does miss it, using for the purpose,
I have no doubt, that only form of rebellion against
its accursed tyranny which we have yet learned,
physical inability to catch it. Where that morning
train starts from is a mystery ; but it never fails to

4 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
come for us, and it never takes us beyond the city,
I well know.
I have a clear memory of the newspapers as they
were that morning. I had a sheaf of them, for it is
my melancholy business to know what each is saying.
I learned there were dark and portentous matters,
not actually with us, but looming, each already
rather larger than a man's hand. If certain things
happened, said one half the papers, ruin stared us
in the face. If those things did not happen, said the
other half, ruin stared us in the face. No way
appeared out of it. You paid your halfpenny and
were damned either way, If you paid a penny you
got more for your money. Boding gloom, full-
orbed, could be had for that. There was your extra
value for you. I looked round at my fellow passengers,
all reading the same papers, and all, it could be
reasonably presumed, with foreknowledge of catas
trophe. They were indifferent, every one of them.
I suppose we have learned, with some bitterness,
that nothing ever happens but private failure and
tragedy, unregarded by our fellows except with pity.
The blare of the political megaphones, and the sus
tained panic of the party tom-toms, have a message
for us, we may suppose. We may be sure the noise
means something. So does the butcher's boy when
the sheep want to go up a side turning. He makes
a noise. He means something, with his warning
cries. The driving uproar has a purpose. But we
have found out (not they who would break up side
turnings, but the people in the second class carriages
of the morning train) that now, though our first
instinct is to start in a panic, when we hear

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 5
another sudden warning shout, there is no need to
do so. And perhaps, having attained to that more
callous mind which allows us to stare dully from the
carriage window though with that urgent din in our
ears, a reasonable explanation of the increasing
excitement and flushed anxiety of the great States
men and their fuglemen may occur to us, in a genera
tion or two. Give us time ! But how they wish
they were out of it, they who need no more time,
but understand.
I put down the papers with their calls to social
righteousness pitched in the upper register of the
tea-tray, their bright and instructive interviews
with flat earthers, and with the veteran who is
topically interesting because, having served one
master fifty years, and reared thirteen children on
fifteen shillings a week, he has just begun to draw
his old age pension. (There's industry, thrift, and
success, my little dears !) One paper had a column
account of the youngest child actress in London,
her toys and her philosophy, initialed by one
of our younger brilliant journalists. All had a
society divorce case, with sanitary elisions. Another
contained an amusing account of a man working his
way round the world with a barrel on his head.
Again, the young prince, we were credibly informed
in all the papers of that morning, did stop to look in
at a toy-shop window in Regent Street the previous
afternoon. So like a boy, you know, and yet he is a
prince of course. The matter could not be doubted.
The report was carefully illustrated. The prince
stood on his feet outside the toy shop, and looked in.
To think of the future as a modestly long series of

6 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
such prone mornings, dawns unlit by heaven's light,
new days to which we should be awakened always by
these clamant cockcrows bringing to our notice what
the busy-ness of our fellows had accomplished in
nests of intelligent and fruitful china eggs, was
enough to make one stand up in the carriage, horri
fied, and pull the communication cord. So I put
down the papers and turned to the landscape. Had
I known the Skipper was back from below the horizon
— but I did not know. So I must go on to explain
that that morning train did stop, with its unfailing
regularity, and not the least hint of reprieve, at the
place appointed in the Schedule. Soon I was at
work, showing, I hope, the right eager and con
centrated eye, dutifully and busily climbing the
revolving wheel like the squirrel ; except, unluckier
than that wild thing so far as I know, I was clearly
conscious, whatever the speed, the wheel remained
forever in the same place. Looking up to sigh
through the bars after a long spin there was the
Skipper smiling at me.
I saw an open door. I got out. It was as though
the world had been suddenly lighted, and I could see
a great distance.
We stood in Fleet Street later, interrupting the
tide. The noise of the traffic came to me from
afar, for the sailor was telling me he was sailing
soon, and that he was taking his vessel an experi
mental voyage through the tropical forests of the
Amazon. He was going to Para, and thence up
the main stream as far as Manaos, and would then
attempt to reach a point on the Madeira river near
Bolivia, 800 miles above its junction with the greater

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 7
river. It would be a noble journey. They would
see Obydos and Santarem, and the foliage would
brush their rigging at times, so narrow would be the
way, and where they anchored at night the jaguars
would come to drink. This to me, and I have read
Humboldt, and Bates, and Spruce, and Wallace. As
I listened my pipe went out.
It was when we were parting that the sailor, who
is used to far horizons and habitually deals with
affairs in a large way because his standards in his
own business are the skyline and the meridian, put
to me the most searching question I have had to
answer since the city first caught and caged me. He
put it casually when he was striking a match for a
cigar, so little did he himself think of it.
" Then why," said he, " don't you chuck it ? "
What, escape ? I had never thought of that. It
is the last solution which would have occurred to
me concerning the problem of captivity. It is a
credit to you and to me that we do not think of our
chains so disrespectfully as to regard them as any
thing but necessary and indispensable, though some
times, sore and irritated, we may bite at them. As if
servitude fell to our portion like squints, parents
poor in spirit, green fly, reverence for our social
superiors, and the other consignments from the
stars. How should we live if not in bonds ? I have
never tried. I do not remember, in all the even
and respectable history of my family, that it has ever
been tried. The habit of obedience, like our family
habit of noses, is bred in the bone. The most we
have ever done is to shake our fists at destiny ; and
I have done most of that.

me.

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
Give it up," said the Skipper, " and come with

With a sad smile I lifted my foot heavily and
showed him what had me round the ankle. " Poo,"
he said. " You could berth with the second mate.
There's room there. I could sign you on as purser.
You come."
I stared at him. The fellow meant it. I laughed
at him.
" What," I asked conclusively, " shall I do about
all this ? " I waved my arm round Fleet Street,
source of all the light I know, giver of my gift of
income tax, limit of my perspective. How should I
live when withdrawn from the smell of its ink, the
urge of its machinery ?
That," he said. " Oh, damn that ! "

tt

It was his light tone which staggered me and not
what he said. The sailor's manner was that of one
who would be annoyed if I treated him like a practical
man, arranging miles of petty considerations and
exceptions before him, arguing for hours along rows
of trifles, and hoping the harvest of difficulties of no
consequence at the end of the argument would con
vince him. Indeed I know he is always impatient
for the next step in any business, and not, like most
of us, for more careful consideration. " Look there,"
said the sailor, pointing to Ludgate Circus, " see
that Putney 'bus ? If it takes up two more passengers
before it passes this spot then you've got to come."
That made the difficulty much clearer. I agreed.
The 'bus struggled off, and a man with a bag ran
at it and boarded it. One ! Then it had a clear

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 9
run — it almost reached us — in another two seconds ! —
I began to breathe more easily ; the danger of liberty
was almost gone. Then the sailor jumped for the
'bus before it was quite level, and as he mounted
the steps, turned, and held up two fingers with a
grin. Thus was a voyage of great moment and adventure
settled for me.
When I got home that night I referred to the
authorities for the way to begin an enterprise on
the deep. What said Hakluyt ? According to him
it is as easy as this : " Master John Hawkins, with
the Jesus of Lubeck, a ship of 700 tunnes, and the
Solomon, a ship of seven score, the Tiger, a barke
of 50, and the Swalow of 30 Tunnes, being all well
furnished with men to the number of one hundred
threescore and ten ; as also with ordinance and
vituall requisite for such a voyage, departed out of
Plinmouth the 18 day of October in the yeere of our
Lord 1564, with a prosperous wind."
But we all know such things were done far better
in that century. Yet Master John Hawkins, who
seems to have handled a fleet with greater facility
than I do this pen now I am so anxious to scratch
it across preliminaries and get it to sea, did not come
to a decision by the number of passengers on a
Putney 'bus. So I turned to a modern authority.
Yet Bates, I found, is worse than old John Hawkins,
Bates actually arrives at his destination in the first
sentence. He steps across in thirty -eight words from
England to the Amazon. " I embarked at Liverpool
with Mr Wallace, in a small trading vessel, on the
26th day of April 1848; and, after a swift passage

10 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
from the Irish Channel to the equator arrived on the
26th of May off Salinas."
Well, I did not. I say it is a gross deception.
Voyaging does not get accomplished in that off
hand fashion. It is a mockery to captives like
ourselves to pretend bondage is puffed away in that
airy manner. It is not so easily persuaded to dis
encumber us. Indeed, with this and that, I found
the initial step in the pursuit of the sunset red a
heavy weight, and hardly suited to the constitution
of men who have worked into a deep rut ; but that
high resolution and a faith equal to belief in the
liquefaction of St Januarius' blood are needed to
drop the protective routine of years, to sheer off the
dear and warm entanglements of home and friend
ships ; to shut the front door one bleak winter
evening when the house smells comfortable and
secure, and the light on the hearth, under such cir
cumstances, is ironic in its bright revelation of years
of ease and stability till then not fully appraised;
and so depart in the dusk for an unknown Welsh
coaling port, there to board a tramp steamer for a
voyage that has some serious doubts about it, though
its landfall shall be near the line, and have palms in
it. The door slammed, I noticed, in a chill and
penetrating minor, an incident of travel I have never
seen recorded.
Now do I come at last, O Liberty, my loved and
secret divinity ! Your passionate pilgrim is here,
late, though still young and eager eyed ; yet with
his coat collar up-turned for the present. Allons !
the Open Road is before him. But how the broad
and empty prospects of his freedom shudder with the

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 11
dire sounds and cries of the milk churns on Pad-
dington Station !
And next I remember black night — it was, I think,
about three a.m. — and a calamitous rain, and a
Welsh railway station where I had alighted, faint
with a famine, a kit bag soon to increase in weight
and drag, and a pair of numbed feet. There was a
porter who bore himself as though it were the last
day and he knew the worst, a dying station light,
the wind and rain, and me. Outside was the dark,
and one of the greatest coaling ports in the world.
As I could not see the coal in great bulk I could not
admire it. The railway man turned out the light,
conducted me politely into a puddle, set my course
for the docks in uncharted night with a dexter
having no convictions, and left me. I began to hate
the land of the wild bard in which I found myself
for the first time, and felt a savage satisfaction in
being nearly a pure blooded London Saxon ; and as
I surveyed my prospects in that country, not even
the fact that I had a grandparent named Hughes
would have prevented me striking Wales with my
umbrella, for it is only a cheap one ; but I had left
it in the train.
It had never occurred to me (any more than it did
to you when you got this book to learn about the
tropic sea and the jungle) that the Open Road,
where the chains fall from us, would include Swansea
High Street four hours before sunrise in a steady
winter downpour. But there I discovered that
trade wind seas by moonlight, flying fish, Indians,
and forests and palms, cannot be compelled. They
come in their turn. They are mixed with Utter and

12 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
dead stuff, like prizes in a bran tub. Going down
the drear and aqueous street it was clear that if
there are exalted moments in travel, as on the instant
when we discover we really may prepare to go, yet
exaltation implies the undistinguished flats from
which, for a while, we are translated. This is a
travel book for honest men. I am still on the flat.
It will be to-morrow presently. «
My chief fear was that my waterproof, rattling
in the wind, would alarm silent and sleeping Swan
sea. I found a policeman standing at a street
corner, holding out his cape to help away the
rain. He could give me no hope. He knew where
the dock was, but the way thither was difficult
and tortuous. I had better follow the tram lines,
and ask again, if I saw anybody. Therefore the
tram lines I followed till my portable estate, by com
pound interest, had increased to untold tons ; but
the empty tram way went on for ever down the rows
of frozen and desolate lamps, so that I surrendered
all my chances of the seas of the tropics and the
jungle of the Brazils, and turned aside from the
course which the policeman said led to ships and
the deep, entered the dark portico of a shop, where
it was only half wet, and lit my pipe, there to
wait for the shy gods to turn my luck. Hesitating
footsteps fumbled to where I was hidden, and
stopped at the flash of my match. " Could yer 'blige
with a light, mister ? "
He was a little elderly seaman in yellow oilskins
and a so'wester. He was rather drunk. His oilskins
gathered the reflected street shine, so that he looked
phosphorescent, an old man risen wet and shining

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 13
from the ocean. He was looking for Buenos Aires,
he explained, and hadn't got any matches. Now he,
for the Plate, and I, for ultimate Amazonas, set off
down the Swansea tram lines. And the wind whined
through overhead wires, and a lost dog followed us
along the empty thoroughfare where the only sound
was of waterspouts, and the elderly mariner sang
bold and improper songs, so that I wondered there
was not an irruption of nightcaps at upper Swansea
windows to witness this disturbance of their usual
peace. We came at length to abandoned lagoons, where
spectral ships were moored down the marges, and
round the wide waters was the loom of uncertain
monsters and buildings. Railway metals waylaid
us and caught us by the feet. There were many
electric moons swaying in the gale, and they spilled
showers of broken light, which melted on the black
water, and betrayed to us our loneliness in outer
night. The call of a vessel's syren across that in
hospitable space was heard by us as the prolonged
moan of the lost.
The old man of the sea took me under a stack of
timber to light his pipe. He borrowed my box of
matches, and malicious spurts of wind extinguished
each match, steadily, as mine ancient struck them.
It was now 4 a.m. He threw each bit of dead wood
down, without irritation, as though it were the fate
of man to strike lights for the gods to douse, but
yet was he uplifted now beyond the hurt of cosmic
mockery. The matches were not wasted. At least
they lighted up his sorrowful face as he talked to me.
I would not have had him any the less drunk, for it

14 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
but softened his facial integument, which I could see
had been hardened and set by bitter experience,
masking the man ; but now his jaded life, warmed
by emotion, though much of the emotion was artificial
and of the pewter born, was quick in his face again,
and made him a human responsive to his kind,
instead of a sober and warped shellback with a sour
remembrance of his hardships, and of the futility of
his endurance, and of the distance away of his
masters with their bowels of iron.
He had seven children, and the sea was a weary
place. Had I any children ? — and God keep them
if I had. *He was a troublesome old man ("that's
another light gone ") but he had just left his kids
(" ah, to hell wi' the wind ") and he had to talk to
someone about them, and that was my rotten luck,
said he. We got to the fifth child, and I heard
something about her, when the wind reached round
the wood stack at us, and snatched the last glim.
So it was in the dark that I heard about the
other two and the wife, while one of my pockets
filled with rain. Only Milly, he said, was at work,
and what was four pound a month for the rest ?
And he was sick of the sea and chief mates, and did
I tliink a chap stood for a better time when he died,
if he kept off drink and did his bit without grousing,
like some of the parson fellers said? Then he in
dicated my ship, and disappeared in the dark. He
is still waiting an answer to his last question, which
I have saved for you to give him.
For me, I was in no mood to discuss whether balm
is to be got in Gilead, when we come to the place ;
but stumbling among the lumber on the deserted

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 15
deck of the s.s. " Capella," I found a cabin, fell into
it, and remember nothing more but the smell of hot
bread, eggs and bacon, and coffee, which visited me
in a beautiful dream. Then I woke to the reveille
of a tin whistle, which the chief engineer was playing
in my ear; and it was daylight. The jumble of
recollections of the night before were but dark
insanities. But the smell of that aromatic food, I
give grace, did not pass with the awakening, for
next door I heard lively sizzling in the galley. Already
Fleet Street was hull down.
If you are used only to the methods of passenger
steamers and regular routes, then you know little
of travel. You are but carried about. Insistent
clocks and schedules keep that way, and the up
holstered but rigid routine is a soporific. You never
see the hither side of the hedge. The granite counten
ance of fortune, her eyes filmed like frozen pools,
which keeps alert and bright the voyager who is
unprotected from her unscheduled and unmoral acts
except by his own ready buckler, is watched for you
by others. You are never surprised into fear by
the unlucky position of the planets, nor moved to
sing Laus Deo, when now and then, the stars are
propitious. I had been brought hastily to the
" Capella," for it was said she was sailing instantly.
This morning I learned at breakfast that nobody
knew when she could sail. Our steamer sat two feet
higher than her capacity. There was some gal
vanized iron to come from Glasgow, some machinery
from Sheffield ; and owing to labour difficulties
we were short of several hundred tons of coal. A

16 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
little mob of us, all strangers, shuffled after the
Skipper's spry heels that morning to the Board of
Trade offices, where an official mumbled over the
ship's articles, to our shut ears, and we signed where
we were told. A more glum and unromantic group
of voyagers, each man twirling his shabby hat in his
hands as he waited his turn for the corroded pen,
was never seen this side of the Elizabethan era. I
became the purser of the " Capella," with my wages
lawfully recorded at a shilling per month.
I was committed. There was no withdrawal now but
desertion. And desertion, at times, I seriously con
sidered, because for a week more the cargo dribbled
down to us, while I endured as a moucher about
those winter docks with their coal tips, and the
muddy streets with their sailors' slop marts, marine
stores, and pawnshops having a cankered display
of chronometers, telescopes, and other flotsam of
marine failure and wreckage. Daily the quays and
the dismal waterside ways with their cheap shops
were still more depressed by additional snow mush
and drives of sleet ; and it was no warmth for this
idler that he saw the tradesmen, because of the
season, putting holly among their oranges and
wreathing beer bottles with chains of coloured paper.
The iron decks and cabins of my new home were as
chill and unfriendly as the empty grate, the marble
tables, and the tin advertisements of chemical slops
of a temperance hotel. Am I plain ? Such are the
conditions which compass the wayward traveller.
This is what chills one's rapid pulse when pursuing
at last the rosy visions of boyhood. The deplorablej
littoral of our island kingdom is part of a life on the

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 17
ocean wave, and should help you in coming to a
decision when next you see a friendless and bestial
sailorman. It becomes necessary to declare that
we shall really get down to the tropics presently ;
have the courage to wait, like the crew of the
" Capella." Our ship did sail, when she was ready.
It was the afternoon before we sailed, and having
listened long enough to my messmates, who, after
dinner, weighed the probabilities of malaria, yellow
fever and other alien disasters into our coming
strange voyage, that I went into the town to take
my last look round a book shop, and to get some
marine soap, dungarees, and things. Here was I at
last with my heart's desire. On the very next day
I should sail, I myself, and no other hero, veritably
Me at last, for a place not on the chart, because the
place we should find, at the journey's end, the map
described with those words of magic : " Forest " and
"Unexplored." I made my way round crates and
barrels on that untidy deck, which had a thick mud
of coal dust and snow, to the ladder overside. Coal
dust and melting snow ! But where was the uplifted
heart, the radiant anticipation, as of one to whom
the future was big with treasures to be born, which
are the privilege of a young pilgrim, released from
his usual obligations to pursue far horizons in the
Spanish main, while his envious fellows in the city
still cast ledgers under gas lamps ? Here was
another swindle of the romanticists. You may
search their warm and golden pages in vain for coal
tips, melting ice, delays, and steam heaters that
will not work for cold cabins. Down they go here,
though. These gallant affairs, I thought, as I de-

18 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
scended the wet and gritty ladder, are much better
done before the fire at home, in your slippers ; for
the large scale map, as you traverse its alluring blank
areas, leaves out the conditions which now, when
I am on the actual business, precipitate as frozen
spicules, as would north winds, my warm, aerial,
and cloudy enthusiasms that were wont to be dyed
such wonderful hues by sunsets, poems, and tales
of old travel. Another of these congealing draughts
was now to catch me unbuttoned. Because of our
unusual destination, and the wild stories that were
told of it, we were a point of interest in Swansea
docks, and had many interviewers and curious
visitors. Some of them were on the quay then,
inspecting our steamer, and I as stepped off the ladder
one turned to me.
" Mister," he whispered, " are you going in her ? "
"I am," I said.
" 0 gord," said he.
That night I met a number of my grave fellow
shipmates in the town. The question was, Should
we then go back to the ship ?
" What," burst out one of us in surprise-^-his
gold-laced cap was already resting on his right eye
brow — " Now ? Not me. Boys, don't freeze the
Carnival. Follow me!"
We followed him. The rest of the evening is more
easily given in dumb show. There was a mechanical
piano in a saloon bar, and it steadily devoured
pennies, and returned to us automatic joy, fortissimo,
over which our conversation strenuously high-
stepped and vaulted. Later, there was a search
for cabs, and an engineer carried with him every-

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 19
where two geese by their necks and sometimes trod
on their loose feet. When he did this he snatched
a goose from his own grasp, and then roundly abused
us for our post-dated frivolity. We learned our
steamer was now moored in mid-dock. We found
a quay wall, and at the bottom of it, at a great depth
in the dark, the level of the water was seen only
because shreds of lamp-shine floated there. We
understood a boat was below, and found it was, and
we loaded it till the water brimmed at the gunwale.
As we mounted the " Capella's " rope-ladder only one
goose fell back into the dock.
The " Capella " started in her sleep, and she woke
me. She was still trembling. Resting my hand on
her I felt her heart begin to throb, though faintly.
We were off.
It was a bright morning, early and keen. Those
habitual quays now were moving past us. The decks
were cleared, the carpenter and some sailors were
fixing the hatches, and the pilot, muffled in a thick
white shawl, was on the bridge with the Skipper. We
stopped in the outer lock, the exhaust humming
impatiently while a pier-head jumper — for we were
a sailor short — was examined by our doctor. The
Skipper had some short words for an official who
had mounted the bridge, because the third mate
had deserted, and had taken his half pay ; and the
official, who had volunteered to get us a substitute,
had failed. There were now but two mates for our
big tramp steamer going a long and arduous voyage
which included the navigation for some months of
narrow inland waterways in the tropics. Our first

20 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
mate, passing amidships where the Purser was leaning
overside, stopped to tell me what this meant for him
and the second mate. I was mighty glad it was not
the purser's fault. I have never heard a short speech
more passionate ; and his eyes were feral. Yet it
became increasingly clear to me, as the voyage
lengthened, that his eyes no more than met the case.
Out we drove at last. It was December, but by
luck we found a halcyon morning which had got lost
in the year's procession. It was a Sunday morning,
and it had not been ashore. It was still virgin,
bearing a vestal light. It had not been soiled yet
by any suspicion of this trampled planet, this muddy
star, which its innocent and tenuous rays had dis
covered in the region of night. I thought it still was
regarding us as a lucky find there. Its light was
tremulous, as if with joy and eagerness. I met this
discovering morning as your ambassador while you
still slept, and betrayed not, I hope, any greyness
and bleared satiety of ours to its pure, frail, and
lucid regard. That was the last good service I did
before leaving you quite. I was glad to see how well
our old earth did meet such a light, as though it had
no difficulty in looking day in the face. The world
was miraculously renewed. It rose, and received
the new-born of Aurora in its arms. There was clouds
of pearl above hills of chrysoprase. The sea ran in
volatile flames. The shadows on the bright deck
shot to and fro as we rolled. The breakfast bell
rang not too soon. This was a right beginning.
The pilot was dropped, and a course was shaped to
pass between Lundy and Hartland. A strong north
wester and its seas caught us beyond the Mumbles,

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 21
and the quality of the sunshine thinned to a flicker
ing stuff which cast only grey shadows. The
" Capella " became quarrelsome, and began to strike
the seas heavily. You may know the "Capella"
when you see her. She is a modern three-thousand-ton
freighter, with derrick supports fore and aft, and a
funnel ; and the three of them are so fearful of seeming
rakish that they overdo the effect of stern utility,
and appear to lean ahead. She is a three-island
ship, the amidships section carrying the second
mate's cabin, and the cabins of the four engineers,
all of them, excepting the Chief's cabin, looking out
wards overseas across a narrow sheltered alleyway ;
and on a narrower athwartship's alleyway there, and
opening astern, are the Chief's place, and the cook's
galley, the entrance to the engine-room, and the
engineers' messroom. Above this structure is the
boat deck. You may reach the poop, which contains
the master's and chief mate's quarters, the doctor's
and steward's berths, and the saloon, by descending
a perpendicular iron ladder to the long main deck,
or else, as all did at sea, by a flying trestle bridge,
which is dismantled when in port. Her black funnel
is relieved by a cryptic design in white, and her bows
are so bluff that, as the chief mate put it, " her belly
begins there." She might not take your eye, but a
shipowner would see her points. She carries a large
cargo on a comparatively low registered tonnage.
The money that built her went mostly in hull and
engines, and the latter do their work as sweetly as
an eight-day clock, giving ten and a half knots,
weather permitting, on a low coal consumption.
There was not much money left, therefore, for balm

22 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
in the cabins, and that is the reason we do not find
it there.
At sundown the sky cleared. The wind, increased
in violence, had swept it of the last feather. Lundy
was over our starboard bow, a small dark blot in a
clear yellow light which poured, with the gale and
the rising seas, from the west. The glass was falling.
Now, the Skipper has often told me how his " Capella "
had faced hurricanes off Cape Hatteras, when laden
with ore, and had kept her decks dryt There are
other stories about her surprising buoyancy, when
deeply laden, and I have heard them all at home,
and they are fine stories. But what lies they are !
For there below me, with Lundy not even passed, and
the Bay of Biscay to come (Para not to be thought
of yet) were tons and tons of salt wash that could
not get time to escape by the scuppers, but plunged
wearily amongst the hatches and winches.
" I've never seen her as dirty as this," grumbled
the chief engineer apologetically, peeping from his
cabin at cold green water lopping over casually on
to the after deck. " It's that patent fuel — its stowed
wrong. Now she'll roll — you can feel it — the cat
she is, she's never going to stop. It's that patent
fuel and her new load line."
Certainly she sat close to the sea. I had never
seen so much lively water so close. She wallowed,
she plunged, she rolled, she sank heavily to its level.
I looked out from the round window of the Chief's
cabin, and when she inclined those green mounds of
the swell swinging under us and away were superior,
in apparition, to my outlook.
" Listen to it, ' ' said the Chief. He stopped triturat-

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 23
ing some shavings of hard tobacco between his
huge palms, and sat quietly, hands clasped,
as though in prayer. The surge mourned over
the deck. The day, too, was growing towards
the dusky hours of retrospection. That sombre
monody outside was like the tremor and boom of
the drums funebre. "That chap some of you talk
about — Lloyd George ! " — said the Chief, suddenly
rubbing bis tobacco again with energy. (Good God,
I thought, and here we are at sea too. Now what
has the misguided man done.) " If I had him here
I'd hold him down in that wash on deck till it cleared.
Then he'd know. He put it there, to break sailors'
legs. This steamer, she had dry decks till her load
line was altered. She carries more now than she
was built for, two hundred tons more. If I had him
here — but there you are ! Popularity ! There's a
fine popular noise for you, isn't it ? Sailors growled
for better food. 'What about this improved food
scale ? ' says Mr Lloyd George to the shipowners.
cOh,' said they, ' we'll give 'em better food, the drunken
insubordinate dogs, if you'll make overloading legal.'
' Why,' says Lloyd George, ' then it wouldn't be
illegal, would it ? ' So it was done. What does the
public know about a ship's buoyancy ? Nothing.
But it understands food. So the clever man heightens
the Plimsoll mark, adds a million or so to shipowners'
capital by dipping his pen in the ink, and gives Jack
more jam. What you want ashore," the Chief
added bitterly, "is not more voters, as some say,
but more lunatic asylums."
Though I had left politics at home, to be settled
by others, like the trouble with the drains, the dog

24 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
licence, and the dispute about the garden fence,
I glanced with interest at the Chief. I know him
well. Not only is he a kindly man, but he himself
is also a philosophic rebel. But his eye was hard,
and he still ground the tobacco with forgetful energy,
as though an objectionable thing were between
his strong hands. Then impatiently he threw the
tobacco loose on his log book, which was open on his
deck, paused, and said, " Ah, maybe the man thought
a little freeboard the less didn't matter. God give
him grace," and picked his flute out of a book
shelf which was fastened above his bunk ; sat down
over the steam heater, and broke out like a black
bird. Yet was it a well-remembered air he fluted so
well. I listened so long as respect for the artist
demanded, then rose, filled my pipe from the fragrant
grains on the log book, and left him. Presently I
would listen to such airs ; but this was too soon.
I repeat I had confidence in the " Capella " to gain.
I went forward to get it, mounting the bridge, where
my cabin mate, the youthful second officer, was in
charge, in his oilskins. A cheerful sight he looked.
" I think," said he briskly, " we're going to catch it."
He was puckering his face over our course. Lundy
was looming large — even Rat Island was plain —
but it looked so frail in that flood of seas, wind, and
wild yellow fight streaming together from the evening
west, that I looked for the unsubstantial island to
spring suddenly from its foundations, and to come
down on us a stretched wisp of thinned and ragged
smoke. The sea was adrift from its old confines.
The flood was pouring past, and the wind was the
drainage of interstellar space. Lundy was the last

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 25
delicate fragment of land. It still fronted the
upheaval and rush of the ungoverned elements, but
one looked for it to be swept away.
Yet that wild and scenic west, of such pallor and
clarity that one shrank from facing its inhospitable
spaciousness, with each shape of a wave there,
black against the light as it reared ahead, a distinct
individual foe in the host moving to the attack, was
but the prelude. Night and the worst were to come.
Just then, while the last of the light was shining on
the officer's oilskins, I was only surprised that our
bulk was such a trifle after all. Our loaded vessel
looked so bluff and massive when in dock. She began
to attempt, off Lundy, the spring and jauntiness of
a trawler. The bows sank to the rails in an acre of
white, and the spume flew past the bridge like rain.
The black bows lifted and swayed, buoyant on
submarine upheavals, to cut out segments of the
sunset ; then sank again into dark hollows where
the foam was luminous. The cold and wind were
bitter dolours.
We rolled. I grasped the rail of the weather
cloth, in the drive of wind and spume, and rode
down on our charger like a valiant man ; like a
valiant man who is uncertain of his seat. Some
thing like a valiant man. We advanced to the
attack, masts and funnel describing great arcs, and
steadily our bows shouldered away the foe. I think
sailors deserve large monies. Being the less valiant
— for the longer I watched, the more grew I wet and
cold — it came to my mind that where we were, but
a few weeks before, another large freighter had her
hatches opened by the seas, and presently was but a

26 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
trace of oil and cinders on the waters. You will
remember I am on my first long voyage. The
officer was quite cheerful and asked me if I knew
Forest Gate. There were, he said, some fine girls at
Forest Gate.
We rounded Hartland. It was dusk, the weather
was now directly on our starboard beam, and the
waves were coming solidly inboard. The main deck
was white with plunging water. We rolled still
more. " I can't make out why you left London when
you didn't have to," said the grinning sailor. " I'd
like to be on the Stratford tram, going down to
Forest Gate."
This was nearly as bad as the Chief's flute. I held
up two fingers over those hatches of ours, called
silently on blessed Saint Anthony, who loves sailors,
and went down the ladder ; for night had come, and
the prospect from the " Capella " was not the less
apprehensive to the mind of a landsman because the
enemy could not be seen, except as flying ghosts.
The noises could be heard all right.
I shut my heavy teak door amidships, shut out
the daunting uproar of floods, and the sensation
that the night was collapsing round our heaving
ship. There was a home light far away, on some
unseen Cornish headland, rising and falling like a
soaring but tethered star. Nor did I want the
lights of home.
" I love the sea," a beautiful woman once said to
me. (We, then, stood looking out over it from a
height, and the sea was but the sediment of the
still air, the blue precipitation of the sky, for it was

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 27
that restful time, early October. I also loved it
then.) I was thinking of this, when the concrete floor of
the cabin nearly became a wall, and I fell absurd-
wise, striking nearly every item in the cabin. Was
this the way to greet a lover ? Sitting on a sea-
chest, and swaying to and fro because the ship com
pelled me to a figure of woe, I began to consider
whether it was only the books about the sea
which I had loved hitherto, and not the sea itself.
Perhaps it is better not to live with it, if you would
love it. The sea is at its best at London, near mid
night, when you are within the arms of a capacious
chair, before a glowing fire, selecting phases of the
voyages you will never make. It is wiser not to try
to realize your dreams. There are no real dreams.
For as to the sea itself, love it you cannot. Why
should you ? I will never believe again the sea
was ever loved by anyone whose life was married
to it. It is the creation of Omnipotence, which is
not of human kind and understandable, and so the
springs of its behaviour are hidden. The sea does
not assume its royal blue to please you. Its brute
and dark desolation is not raised to overwhelm
you ; you disappear then because you happen to
be there. It carries the lucky foolish to fortune,
and drags the calculating wise to the strewn bones.
Yet, thought I, that night off Cornwall, if I pray now
as one of the privileged and lucky foolish, this very
occasion may prove to be set apart for the sole use
of the calculating wise. Because that is the way
things happen at sea. What else may we expect
from It, the nameless thing, new-born with each

28 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
dawn, but as old as the night ? Now for me had it
degenerated into its mood of old night, behaving
as it did in the lightless days, before poetry came to
change it with flattery. It was again as inhuman as
when the poet was merely a wonderfully potential
blob on a warm mudbank.
¦Here, you see, is the whole trouble in appealing to
Omnipotence. Picture me entering the wide western
ocean at night, an inconspicuous but self-important
morsel sitting on a sea-chest, at a time when it was
perhaps ordained that hundreds of ships should
have anxious passages. (Afterwards I learned very
many ships did have anxious passages.) How could
I expect to be spared, even though somewhere the
hairs of my head were all numbered ? It is plain
that to spare me would be to extend beneficence to
all. There only remained to me my liberty to
hope that our particular steamer might miss all
seventh waves, by luck. I was free to do that.
I turned up the dull and stinking oil lamp, and
tried to read ; but that fufiginous glim haunted the
pages. That black-edged light too much resembled
my own thoughts made manifest. There were some
bunches of my cabin mate's clothes hanging from
hooks, and I watched their erratic behaviour instead.
The water in the carafe was also interesting, because
quite mad, standing diagonally in the bottle, and
then reversing. A lump of soap made a flying leap
from the washstand, and then slithered about the
floor like something hunted and panic-stricken. I
listened to numerous little voices. There was no
telling their origins. There was a chorus in the cabin,
rustlings, whispers, plaints, creaks, wails, and grunts ;

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 29
but they were foundered in the din when the spittoon,
which was an empty meat tin, got its lashings loose,
and began a rioting fandango on the concrete. Over
the clothes chest, which was also our table and a
cabin fixture, was a portrait of the mate's sweet
heart, and on its frame was one of my busy little
friends the cockroaches ; for the mate and I do not
sleep alone in this cabin, not by hundreds. The
cockroach stood in thought, waving his hands in
terrogatively, as one who talks to himself nervously.
The ship at that moment received a seventh wave,
lurched, and trembled. The cockroach fell. I rose,
listening. I felt sure a new clamour would begin at
once, snowing we had reached another and critical
stage of the fight. But no ; the brave heart of her
was beating as before. I could feel its steady pulse
throbbing in our table. We were alive and strong,
though labouring direfully.
It was when I was thinking whether bed would be,
as I have so often found it, the best answer to doubt,
that I heard a boatswain's pipe.
I fought one side of the door, and the wind fought
the other. My hurry to open the door was great,
but the obstinate wind jammed it firmly. Without
warning the wind released its hold, the ship fell over
to windward, the door flew open, and forth I went,
clutching at the driving dark. Then up sailed my side
of the ship, and the door shut with the sound of gun
fire. I had never experienced such insensate violence.
These were the unlawful noises and movements
of chaos. Hanging to a rail, I was puzzling out
which was the fore and which the rear of the
ship, when a flying lump of salt water struck me

30 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
in the face just as a figure (I thought it was
the chief officer) hurried past me bawling "All
hands." The figure came back. "That you, purser?
Number three hatch has gone," it said, and dis
appeared instantly.
So. Then this very thing had come to me, and at
night ! Our hatches were adrift. It was impossible.
Why, we had only just left Swansea. It could not
be true ; it was absurdly unfair. This was my first
long voyage, and it had only just begun. I stood
like the cricketer who is out for a duck.
If I could tell you how I felt, I would. Somebody
was shouting some where, but his words were cut off
at once by the wind and blown away. I felt my
way along a wet and dark iron alleyway which was
giddily unstable, pressing hard against my feet, and
then falling from under me. I got round by the
engine-room entrance. Small gleams, shavings of
light, were escaping from seams in the unseen
structure, but they showed nothing, except a length
of wet rail or a scrap of wet deck. The ship itself
was a shade, manned by voices.
I could not see that anything was being done.
Were they allowing her to fill up fike an open barge ?
I became aware my surcharged feelings were escap
ing by my knees, which kept knocking in their tremors
against a lower rail. I tried to stop this trembling
by hardening my muscles, but my fearful legs had
their own way. Yet it is plain there was nothing
to fear. I told my legs so. Had we not but that
day left Swansea ? Besides, I had already com
menced a letter which was to be posted at Para, The

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 31
letter would have to be posted. They were waiting
for it at home.
Somewhere below me a heavy mass of water
plunged monstrously, and became a faintly luminous
cloud over all the main deck aft, actually framing
the rectangular form of the deck in the night.
It was unreasonable. I was not really one of the
crew either, though on the articles. I was there by
chance. No advantage should be taken of that.
A torrent poured down the athwartships alleyway,
and nearly swept me from my feet.
One could not watch what was happening. That
was another cruel injustice. The wind and sea could
be heard, and the ship could be felt. But how could
I be expected to know what to do in the dark in such
circumstances ? There ought to be a light. This
should have happened in the daytime. My garrulous
knees struck the lower rail violently in their excite
ment. I leaned over the rail, shading my eyes. I
grew savagely indignant with something having
no name and no shape. I cannot even now give a
name to the thing that angered me, but can just
discern, in the twilight which shrouds the undis
covered, a vast calm face the rock of which no human
emotion can move, with eyes that stare but see
nothing, and a mouth that never speaks, and ears
from which assailing cries and questions fall as
mournful echoes, ironic repetitions. This flung
stone falls from it, as unavailing as your prayers ;
but we shall never cease to pray and fling stones,
alternately, up there into the twilight.
Nevertheless, when the chief, with his hurricane
lamp, found me, he says I was smiling. The youth

32 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
who was our second mate ran up and stood by us,
the better to shout to the deck below. He shouted,
bending over the rail, till he was screaming through
hoarseness. He turned to us abruptly. "They
don't understand a word I say," he cried in despair.
" There isn't a sailor or an Englishman in the crowd,
the  German farmers." This, I found afterwards,
was nearly true. These men had been signed on at
a Continental port. It was really our Dutch cook
who saved us that night. It was the cook who first
saw the hatch covers going.
The ship's head had been put to the seas to
keep the decks as clear as possible, and being
now more accustomed to the gloom I could make
out the men below busy at the hatch. Most
conspicuous among them was the cook, who had
taken charge there, and he, with three languages,
bludgeoned into surprising activity the inexperienced
youngsters who were learning for the first time what
happens to a ship when the carpenter's chief job
on leaving port has its defects discovered by excep
tional weather. They were wading through swirling
waters as they worked, and once a greater wave
sprang bodily over them, and when the hatch showed
through the foam again some of the men had gone
as though dissolved. But it was found they had kept
the right side of the bulwarks, and the elderly car
penter, whose leg had got wedged in a winch, was the
only one damaged.
If you ask me when I shall be pleased to allow the
necessary sun to rise upon this narrative to give it a
little warmth, then I must tell you it cannot be done
till we have fastened down the " Capella's " number

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 33
two hatch, at least. That hatch has gone now, and
if hatches one and four give way while number
two is getting attention from the weary, soaked,
and frozen crowd which has just had an hour's
desperate work at number three, then I fear the sun
will never rise on this narrative. (How Bates got
over to his wonderful blue butterflies in those forest
paths under a tropical sun in thirty-eight words I do
not know. He must have been thinking of nothing
but his butterflies. I cannot do it, with the seas and
the ship keeping my mind so busy.)
Luckily, the other hatches kept staunch. We were
watertight again. When the Old Man, the Chief,
the Doctor, and the Purser, gathered late that night
in the Chief's cabin to see what it was he had
secreted in his cupboard, and boasted of, we sat
where we could, being comfortably crowded, and I
never knew tobacco could taste like that. I felt as
if never before had I found such large leisure for
extracting its full flavour. From being suddenly con
fined within a space which gave me a short outlook of
a few hours, I was presently released into the open
again and of what might remain to me of the usual
gift of ample years. I had all that time to smoke in.
Never did a pipe taste so sweet. It is idle for good
and serious souls to think me graceless here with this
talk of tobacco immediately after such a release.
Let me tell them my sacrificial smoke rose up straight
and accepted. Looking through the smoke I saw
clearly how worthy, kind, and lovable were the
faces of my comrades. I warmed to this voyage for
the first time ; as though, after a test, I had been
initiated. This was the place for me, with men like

34 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
these about me, and such great affairs to be met.
I revelled in the thought of our valorous bluff,
insignificant as we were in that malign desolation,
sundered from our kind.
" Chief," said the Old Man, " it was my department
that time. None of your old engines did it."
" You've got a good cook," said the Chief, " I saw
that." Then the Chief, remembering something,
turned in his seat to the picture hanging above his
desk of a smiling and handsome matron. " Here's
luck, old girl," he said, holding up his glass ; " you
can still send me some letters."
¦ •••••
The Chief, in case of an emergency, slept in his
clothes that night on the settee, and I climbed into
his bunk. What a comfortable outline the man
had, as he lay on his broad back, mildly snoring.
There was a tangle of tense hair over a square copper
coloured forehead. A long experience of such nights
was written in many lines on that brow, and was
shown in that indifferent snoring while chaos was
without. The nose sprang out of the big face like
an ejaculation, and beneath it was a moustache
clipped short to show the red of the upper lip. The
jaw was powerful, but its curves made it friendly.
His body and limbs hid the settee and had a margin
over. I quite believed what I had been told of his
successful way with refractory stokers. There was
confidence to be got from a mere look at that
slumbering Jovian form. The storm assailed its
hairy and fleshy ears in vain. I braced my knees
against the bulkhead to keep myself still, the roll ing
was so violent, and went to sleep . . . waking to find

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 35
us on a level keel ; and was deceived into thinking
the parallel lines of grey and gold in the upper air,
seen as a picture framed by the port, were the heights
about a harbour into which we had run for shelter ;
but it was only cloudland over the western ocean.
The stillness, too, was but a short reprieve. The wind
was merely making a detour, to spring at us from
another quarter.
The sun died at birth. The wind we had lost
we found again as a gale from the south-east. The
waters quickly increased again, and by noon the
saloon was light and giddy with the racing of the
propeller. I moved about like an infant learning
to walk. We were 201 miles from the Mumbles,
course S.W. ^ W. ; it was cold, and I was still look
ing for the pleasures of travel. The Doctor came to
introduce himself, like a good man, and tried me
with such things as fevers, Shaw, Brazilian ento
mology, the evolution of sex, the medical profession
under socialism, the sea and the poets. But my
thoughts were in retreat, with the black dog in full
cry. It was too cold and damp to talk even of sex.
When my oil lamp began to throw its rays of brown
smell, the Doctor, tired of the effort to exalt the sour
dough which was my mind, left me. It was night.
0, the sea and the poets !
By next morning the gale, now from the south
west, like the seas, was constantly reinforced with
squalls of hurricane violence. The Chief put a
man at the throttle. In the early afternoon the
waves had assumed serious proportions. They
soared by us in broad sombre ranges, with hissing
white ridges, an inhospitable and subduing sight.

36 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
They were a quite different tribe of waves from
the volatile and malicious natives of the Bristol
Channel. Those channel waves had no serried
ranks in the attack; they were but a horde of
undisciplined savages, appearing to assault without
design or plan, but getting at us as they could,
depending on their numbers. The waves in the
channel were smaller folk, but more athletic, and
very noisy ; they appeared to detach themselves
from the sea, and to leap at us, shouting.
These western ocean waves had a different char
acter. They were the sea. We did not have a
multitude of waves in sight, but the sea floor itself
might have been undulating. The ocean was pro
foundly convulsed. Our outlook was confined to
a few heights and hollows, and the moving heights
were swift, but unhurried and stately. Your alarm,
as you saw a greater hill appear ahead, tower, and
bear down, had no time to get more than just out of
the stage of surprise and wonder when the "Capella's"
bows were pointing skyward on a long up-slope of
water, the broken summit of which was too quick
for the " Capella " — the bows disappeared in a white
explosion, a volley of spray, as hard as shot, raked
the bridge, the foredeck filled with raging water,
and the wave swept along our run, dark, severe, and
immense ; with so little noise too ; with but a faint
hissing of foam, as in a deliberate silence. The
" Capella " then began to run down a valley.
The engines were reduced to half speed ; it would
have been dangerous to drive her at such seas. Our
wet and slippery decks were bleak, wind-swept, and
deserted. The mirror of water on the iron surfaces,

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 37
constantly renewed, reflected and flashed the wild
lights in the sky as she rolled and pitched, and some
how those reflections from her pohsh made the
steamer seem more desolate and forlorn. Not a
man showed anywhere on the vessel's length, except
merely to hurry from one vantage to another —
darting out of the ship's interior, and scurrying to
another hole and vanishing abruptly, like a rabbit.
The gale was dumb till it met and was torn
in our harsh opposition, shouting and moaning
then in anger and torment as we steadily pressed
our iron into its ponderable body. You could
imagine the flawless flood of air pouring silently ex
press till it met our pillars and pinnacles, and then
flying past rift, the thousand punctures instantly
spreading into long shrieking lacerations. The
wounds and mouths were so many, loud, and poignant,
that you wondered you could not see them. Our
structure was full of voices, but the weighty body
which drove agamst our shrouds and funnel guys,
and kept them strongly vibrating, was curiously
invisible. The hard jets of air spurted hissing
through the winches. The sound in the shrouds
and stays began like that of something tearing, and
rose to a high keening. The deeper notes were
amidships, in the alleyways and round the engine-
room casing ; but there the ship itself contributed
a note, a metallic murmur so profound that it was
felt as a tremor rather than heard. It was almost
below human hearing. It was the hollow ship
resonant, the steel walls, decks, and bulkheads
quivering under the drumming of the seas, and the
regular throws of the crank-shaft far below.

38 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
It was on this day the " Capella " ceased to be a
marine engine to me. She was not the " Capella "
of the Swansea docks, the sea waggon squatting low
in the water, with bows Hke a box, and a width of
beam which made her seem a wharf fixture. To-day
in the Atlantic her bluff bows rose to meet the ap
proaching bulk of each wave with such steady honesty,
getting up heavily to meet its quick wiles, it is true,
but often with such success that we found ourselves
perched at a height above the gloom of the hollow
seas, getting more light and seeing more world ;
though sometimes the hill-top was missed ; she was
not quick enough, and broke the inflowing ridge
with her face. She behaved so like a brave patient
thing that now her portrait, which I treasure, is to
me that of one who has befriended me, a staunch
and homely body who never tired in faithful well
doing. She became our little sanctuary, especially
near dayfall, with those sombre mounts close round
us bringing twilight before its time.
Your glance caught a wave passing amidships as
a heaped mass of polished obsidian, having minor
hollows and ridges on its slopes, conchoidal fractures
in its glass. It rose directly and acutely from your
feet to a summit that was awesome because the eye
travelled to it over a long and broken up-slope ; this
hill had intervened suddenly to obscure thirty degrees
of fight; and the imagination shrank from contem
plating water which overshadowed your foothold
with such high dark bulk toppling in collapse. The
steamer leaning that side, your face was quite close
to the beginning of the bare mobile down, where it
swirled past in a vitreous flux, tortured lines of

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 39
green foam buried far but plain in its translucent
deeps. It passed; and the light released from the
sky streamed over the " Capella " again as your
side of her lifted in the roll, the sea falling down her
iron wall as far as the bilge. The steamer spouted
violently from her choked valve, as it cleared the sea,
like a swimmer who battles, and then gets his mouth
free from a smother.
Her task against those head seas and the squalls
was so hard and continuous that the murmur of her
heart, which I fancied grew louder almost to a moan
ing when her body sank to the rails, the panic of her
cries when the screw raced, when she lost her hold,
her noble and rhythmic labourings, the sense of her
concentrated and unremitting power given by the
smoke driving in violence from her swaying funnel,
the cordage quivering in tense curves, the seas that
burst in her face as clouds, falling roaring inboard
then to founder half her length, she presently
to raise her heavy body slowly out of an acre of
foam, the cascades streaming from her in veils, — all
this was like great music. I learned why a ship
has a name. It is for the same reason that you and
I have names. She has happenings according to
her own weird. She shows perversities and virtues
her parents never dreamed into the plans they laid
for her. Her heredity cannot be explained by the
general chemics of iron and steel and the principles
of the steam engine ; but something counts in her
of the moods of her creators, both of the happy men
and the sullen men whose bright or dark energies
poured into her rivets and plates as they hammered,
and now suffuse her body. Something of the

40 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
" Capella " was revealed to me, " our " ship. She was
one for pride and trust. She was slow, but that
slowness was of her dignity and size ; she had valour
in her. She was not a light yacht. She was strong
and hard, taking heavy punishment, and then lift
ing her broad face over the seas to look for the
next enemy. But was she slow ? She seemed but
slow. The eye judged by those assailing hills, so
vast and whelmingly quick. The hills were so dark,
swift, and great, moving barely inferior to the clouds
which travelled with them, the collapsing roof which
fell over the seas, flying with the same impulse as
the waters. There was the uplifted ocean, and pres
sing down to it, sundered from it only by the gale —
the gale forced them apart — the foundered heavens,
a low ceiling which would have been night itself
but that it was thinned in patches by some solvent
day. And our " Capella," heavy as was her body,
and great and swift as were the hills, never failed
to carry us up the long slopes, and over the white
summits which moved down on us like the marked
approach of catastrophe. If one of the greater
hills but hit us, I thought 
One did. Late that afternoon the second mate,
who was on watch, saw such a wave bearing down
on us. It was so dominantly above us that in
stinctively he put his hand in his pocket for his
whistle. It was his first voyage in an ocean
steamer; he was not long out of his apprentice
ship in " sails," and so he did not telegraph to
stop the engines. The Skipper looked up through
the chart-room window, saw the high gloom of
this wave over us, and jumped out for the bridge

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 41
ladder to get at the telegraph himself. He was too
late. We went under. The wave stopped us with the
shock of a grounding, came solid over our forelength,
and broke on our structure amidships. The con
cussion itself scattered things about my cabin.
When the " Capella " showed herself again the
ventilators had gone, the windlass was damaged,
and the iron ends of the drum on the forecastle head,
on which a steel hawser was wound, had been doubled
on themselves, like tinfoil.
By day these movements of water on a grand
scale, the harsh and deep noises of gale and breaking
seas, and the labouring of the steamer, no more
than awed me. At least, my sight could escape. But
courage went with the light. At dusk, the eye,
which had the liberty during the hours of light to
range up the inclines of the sea to distant summits,
and note that these dangers always passed, was
imprisoned by a dreadful apparition. When there
was more night than day in the dusk you saw no
waves. You saw, and close at hand, only vertical
shadows, and they swayed noiselessly without pro
gressing on the fading sky high over you. I could
but think the ocean level had risen greatly, and was
see-sawing much superior to us all round. The
" Capella " remained then in a precarious nadir of
the waters. Looking aft from the Chief's cabin I
could see of our ship only the top of our mainmast,
because that projected out of the shadow of the
hollow into the last of the day overhead ; and often
the sheer apparitions oscillating around us swung
above the truck of it, and the whole length vanished.

42 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
The sense of onward movement ceased because
nothing could be seen passing us. At dusk the
steamer appeared to be rocking helplessly in a narrow
sunken place which never had an outlet for us ; the
shadows of the seas erect over us did not move away,
but their ridges pitched at changing angles.
You know the Sussex chalk hills at evening, just
at that time when, from the foot of them, they lose
all detail but what is on the skyline, become an
abrupt plane before you of unequal height. That
was the view from the " Capella," except that the
skyline moved. And when we passed a barque
that evening it looked as looks a solitary bush far on
the summit of the downs. The barque did not pass
us ; we saw it fade, and the height it surmounted fade,
as shadows do when all light has gone. But where
we saw it last a green star was adrift and was ranging
up and down in the night.
This was the dark time when, struggling from
amidships to the poop, you knew there was some
thing organised and coherent under you, still a
standing place in chaos, only because you could feel
it there. And this was the time to seek your fellows
in the saloon, where there was light, warmth, sane
and familiar things, and dinner. The "Capella's"
saloon was fairly large, and the Skipper's pride. It
was panelled in maple and oak, with a long settee
at the foreward end upholstered in red velvet, the
velvet protected by a calico cover. A brass oil
lamp with an opaline shade hung over the table
from a beam beneath the skylight. There was a
closed American stove, with a rigorously polished
brass flue running up through the deck. On two

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 43
oak sideboards in corners of the saloon some artificial
plants blossomed ; from single stems each plant
blossomed into flowers of aniline dyes and of different
species. One of these plants, an imitation palm,
and a better imitation of life than the others, was
carefully watered throughout the voyage by the
steward till it wilted into corruption and an offence,
and became a count against the steward which the
skipper never forgave, for he thought his floral
ornaments lovely. When a pretty Brazilian lady
visitor at Itacoatiara admired the magenta rays of
one blossom, he culled it for her (five earnest minutes
with a sharp knife, for there was wire behind the
green bark) more as a sacrifice and a hard duty than
a joy, and often spoke of it afterwards, shaking his
head regretfully.
Ah ! that saloon. I remember it first, shiny, cold,
and repellent, with a handful of fire to its wide
capacity for draughts, in the northern seas. It
had curious marine odours then, with which I
was not friendly till long after, odours that lamps,
burnished brass, newly polished wood, food, and
the steward's storeroom behind it, never fully
accounted for ; and I remember it as I found it in
the still heat of the Amazon, when it had the air
of an oven ; when, writing in it, the sweat ran off
the fingers to soil the paper, strange insects crawling
everywhere on its green baize table cover, and
banging against its lamp. I remember it assidu
ously now, every trivial feature of it, and the men,
now scattered over all the world, thrown together
in it then for a spell to make the most of each other.
It has the indelible impress of a room of that house

44 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
where first the interest in existence awakened
in us.
The Skipper, with stove behind him, took his seat
before the soup tureen at the head of the table. You
would as soon think of altering the chart-room clock,
even were it wrong, as of touching the soup tureen
without the Skipper's orders. It is his duty and his
right to serve the soup, and to call the steward to
inform him the density of the vegetables in it is too
heavy. We have no market garden on board, you
know. The Doctor was on the Skipper's right hand, and
the Purser next to the Doctor, and on the opposite
side, the chief mate. There was the plump and
bald-headed German steward, in white apron, the
lid of one eye heavier than the other, serving us in
his shirt sleeves, sometimes sucking his teeth with a
noticeable click when he knew a dish deserved our
approval. You kept the soup in the plate by holding
it off the table and watching its tides. When her
stern sailed up, and the screw raced, the glass
shade of the lamp, being a misfit, took our eyes to
watch the coming smash ; the soup then poured over
you, and trying to push your chair back from the
mess, you found the chair was a fixture on the floor.
This last fact was never remembered. I should try
to push my "Capella" chair back now, if I were
sitting in it.
The Doctor, who had been long enough tinkering
careless bodies to have grown a little worn and
grizzled, was often removed from us by a faint but
impervious hauteur, though maybe he was only
a little better and differently dressed. He was

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 45
a patient listener, but his eyes could be droll. The
Doctor's chuckle, escaping from his thoughts while
he was unguarded, would sometimes make the
captain look up from a narrative with question and
a trace of resentment in his glance. The captain
was a great traveller, but he was puzzled to find the
memory of our surgeon following him to the most
remote and unfamiliar strands. " Now how did
that fellow come to be at a place like that ? " the
captain would whisper to me afterwards. " Can't
make him out. Who is he ? " The surgeon had a
bottomless fund of short stories, to which he would
sometimes go about the time when we were pushing
away the banana skins and nutshells. He had an
elisive and stimulating method with them. He knew
his work. At the end of one the captain would
explain the fun to the seriously interested mate (who
had leaned forward to learn), placing spoons and
crumbs to demonstrate the main points. Then the
mate, too, would join us with his happy laugh. The
late and giddy laughter of the mate, when he also
arrived, became a welcome feature of a yarn by the
surgeon. We expected it. The mate's own stories
were usually bawdy ; he always prefaced them with
some unmanageable hilarity, which impeded his start.
Mate (pushing over his plate for soup). That
big wave washed out the men's berths, sir.
Captain. Then it did some good. The dirty
brutes. Mate. Heard the men grumbling to-night.
Said we'll never get the hawsers to run out with
them bugs in the hawse pipes. Say the bugs don't
belong to them, sir — ship's property.

46 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
Doctoe. Any this end of the ship, captain ?
Good Lord !
Captain. Not a bug. And if there's any for'ard
the men brought 'em. No bugs in my ship. Never
saw one in my cabin.
Mate (making a confused effort to master his emotion,
not to spill his soup, and to be respectful). Te-he !
you will, sir, Te-he ! (Realises he may not laugh,
but suffers internally.)
Captain (indicates an interrogation with frightful
eyes and guttural noises).
Mate (controls himself by concentrating on a fork).
Well, sir — I'm just telling you — I heard it said the
men annoyed with bugs — some of 'em said seein's
believin' — said they had enough for everybody.
(His voice breaks into a stifled falsetto) So they
emptied a match — match — they emptied a match
box full down your ventilator this morning.
The captain would frequently keep his seat in the
saloon after dinner till he had finished his cigar, and
in the vein, would put a leg over the arm of his chair,
which he had pushed back (his chair was cushioned,
and was not a fixture), and frowning at his cigar, as if
for defects, would voyage again his early seas. I
suppose a sailor would call our skipper a hard case.
He was an elderly man, tall, spare, and meagrely
bearded. His eyes were set close into a knife-like
nose, and they were opaque and bright, like two blue
stones under a forehead which narrowed and tightened
into a small shiny cranium. There were tufts of grey
wool above his temples. No light came through his
eyes to make them limpid, except when he was

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 47
fondling Tinker, the dog. They shone from the
surface, giving him a look of peering and intent sus
picion. The skin of his face, neck and hands, now
worked a little loose, was so steeped in the tincture of
sunshine that it had preserved an unctious child-like
quality. His dress and habits betrayed an apprecia
tion of his own person. He kept his own medicines.
I guessed he would have a ruthless process in an
emergency; he would identify the success and
safety of the ship with his own. He laughed from
his mouth only, throwing his head back, showing
surprisingly perfect teeth, and laughter did not
change the crystalline glitter of his eyes. There was
something alien and startling in his merriment. As
though his own mind were too cold for him at times
he would seek out me, or the chief, to find warmth
in an argument. He would irritate us into a dis
putation ; and though he was a choleric man, quick
at opposition, yet his vocabulary then was flinty
and sparse. It stuck, and was delivered with pain.
You could think of him labouring at his views of men
and affairs with a creaking slate pencil. He set
one's teeth. But he was a sailor, cautious and bold,
with a knowledge of ships and the sea that was a
mine to me. Let me say that, during the voyage,
I found him busy making a canvas cot. He sat on
the poop and worked there, bent and patient as a
seamstress, for days. With a judgment made too
readily I believed he was, naturally, making it for
his own comfort, against the heat of the river. When
it was finished he was rolling up his ball of yarn,
surveying his job, and he said, mumbling and shy,
that the cot was for me.

48 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
The Skipper, on this day that our decks were
swept, swore about the men and the bugs during
dinner, muttered with foreboding about the glass,
which was still falling, and the coals, which were
being burnt to no purpose. We were hardly doing
more than holding our place on our course. The
saloon was delirious, and when she flung up her
heels, the varied noises rose with the racing pro
peller to a crescendo of furious castenets. The mate
let us. The Skipper sat glooming, eyeing his cigar
resentfully, his leg over the arm of his chair. The
Doctor was swaying with the ship, weary and forlorn.
Tinker had an appeal in his eyes, and made timorous
noises. The Purser wondered why he was there at
all, and blamed his silly dreams. The night boomed
without. What a night !
Skipper. If this southerly wind goes round to
the west and north, look out. I saw porpoises to
day too.
Doctor. When are we due at Para ?
Skipper. Huh ! What's this talk of Para.
You wait. All this talk about when we shall get
there's no good. . . . Now in those Newfoundland
schooners where I served my time — I wouldn't have
no talk in them about getting anywhere. Seems
as if somebody heard. You always run into it.
There was the " Lizzie Pol with." She was about
80 tons. Those west country schooners in the fish
trade are never more than 100 tons? else they'd have
to carry more than a master and one mate. I was
her master, and a kid of eighteen. We left Falmouth
for Cadiz. Now look what happened. My mate
was old Tregenna. He was a regular misery. I

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 49
never knew such a dead homer, not so much as he
was, always wanting to talk about his wife. I say,
when you've cast off, it's best not to have a home.
The ship wants all you can give her. Tregenna,
he looked back a lot. You know what I mean.
Couldn't keep his mind on his job, but wished he
was through with it. There he'd be cutting bread
at dinner, and it 'ud remind him, and he'd be wishing
he was cutting it at home. When things began to
go stiff, he'd say, " who wouldn't sell his little farm
to go to sea ? " Used to figure out on paper how
long we'd be before we'd be back. Why, you never
know when you'll get back.
See what happened. We left Cadiz that year
on the first of January, and got things just right.
The winds chased us over. There were big following
seas, but you know those schooners ride like ducks.
Up and over they go. Never a drop did we ship.
Though they're lively enough to bruise and sicken
all but good sailors. And old Tregenna was rubbing
his hands and making out his figures better and better.
We arrived off St Johns in a bit more than three
weeks. I reckon I'd done it all right, being such a
young chap too. Well, I was turning in that night,
and just as I got into the companion a man said,
" There goes a lump of ice." I jumped out again.
Why, there was ice all round us. The sea was full
of it as far as I could see into the night. " This is
all along of your figuring," I sang out to Tregenna.
" But you'll have a lot of time to reckon it up afresh,"
I said. So he had. Do you know when we got in?
We got in on April 15. We were two months and

50 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
a half getting in. And we came over in three weeks.
There's something in that Jonah story. Always
some fool who can't keep his mouth shut and his
mind on his job.
We did have a time. Two and a half months,
and our provisions ran out. We were living on a
little meal and dried peas. The ice chafed the
" Lizzie " till the rudder was worn down to the
stock. It roughed up her wooden sides till they
looked as if they were covered with long coarse hair.
We were a sight when we got in. You wouldn't
have known us, hardly. We looked as if we'd come
up from the bottom. . . . Don't ask me when we
shall get to Para. Wait till we're out of this. Listen
to that dog. Shut up, you Tinker. Making that
noise, sir ! Go and lie down.
The Skipper clapped on his cap aggressively and
went out. The Doctor had a long and eloquent
silence. Then he turned to me. "This beats all,"
he said. " Come and have a drop of gin, old dear."
He led the way to his berth, which smelt of varnish
and of lamp, and we swayed in chorus as the ship
rolled, and had a heartening mourn together. But
for its accidental compensations travel would not be
worth the trouble. In proof of that there is the
entry in my diary some days after :
"December 22. Awoke at four a.m. with the
ship rolling as brutally as ever. A great noise of
waters and things banging. The seas huge at sun
rise, when the hght came over their tops. Depressing
sight. The sky was blue at first, but was soon
overcast with squalls. The horizon ahead gets

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 51
slate coloured, and low clouds underneath, like
ragged bales of dirty wool, come towards us heavy
and fast. Then the squall and waves rush down on
us express, and the ship buries herself. Constantly
hearing engine-room bell sounded from bridge to
slacken speed as a big sea appears. The captain
popped in his head as I was deciding whether to get
up or stay where I was. He gazed sternly at me and
said he was looking for Jonah; I half believe he
means it too. Everybody is weary of this. The
men have been in oilskins since the start.
"Noon to-day, Lat. 42.6 N. Long. 11.10 W.
Miles by engines since noon yesterday 222. Knots
by revolutions 9.2. But the slip is 49.2 per cent.
So actual distance 112 miles only, and knots 4.6.
Bad going. Wind southly. Engines racing and
engineer still at throttle.
" Night, and a full moon tearing past cloud
openings. The ship occasionally shows like a pale
ghost, the black shadows of the funnel guys and
stanchions oscillating on the white paint-work as
she rolls. I went into Chief's cabin, and from its
open door — for it was sensibly milder — looked out
astern over the way we had come. Up and down,
this side and that, went the steamer, and the Great
Bear, in a wind clear patch of sky, was dancing on
our wake. Polaris was making eccentric orbits
round the main masthead light. Then the Skipper
came in. He sat gazing astern. The look of his
face was enough. It was quite plain he would like
to be offended to-night, and attack anybody about
anything. Presently he started intently as he looked
astern, and jumped from his seat crying the ultimate

52 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
anathema on the chap at the wheel ; and ran out.
The Chief glanced astern and laughed. ' The old
man comes in here because it's uncommon handy
for watching the wake. Look at it. Somebody on
the bridge writing letters on the ocean. Thinking of
his sweetheart, and her name is Sue.' We gave the
Skipper's voice time to reach the wheelhouse, and
then saw the wake visibly tauten out.
" I went aft, balancing like a man learning the
tight rope, along the trestle bridge. The moon was
still falling precipitously through the broken sky,
and areas of the great seas, where the sweeping
searchlight of the moon showed monsters shaping
and slowly vanishing, were frightful. There were
sudden expansions of vivid green lightnings in the
north and east. I found the Doctor in the chief
mate's cabin. I sang some songs in a riving minor,
accompanied by the mate on an accordion, for the
doctor's amusement, and discovered why sailors
always use the accordion, previously a mystery to
me. It has a sad and reflective note, suited to men
with memories when alone on the ocean. It ought
to fit Celtic bards better than the harp. It has a
fine expiring moan. The mate gave an imitation
of a dying man with it.
" To bed at 11. Tried to read Henry James, My
cockroach came out to wave his derisive hands at me.
No wonder. The fight was very bad, and I was
pitched from side to side of the bunk. Nearly thrown
out once. I might just as well have attempted to
read the Bhagavad-Gita in the original. So I read
the last letters from home instead and then fell
asleep as a little child."

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 53
•
There was something of leisure in her movements
next morning. I felt sure the glass must be rising
at last. The air felt lighter and more expansive.
A peep through the port showed me the ceiling had
gone up considerably in the night. There was little
wind, for the waves, though as great as ever, had
lost their white ridges. Their summits were rounded
and smooth. We were running south out of it,
though the residue of the dreary northern seas was
still washing about the decks. It was December
yesterday, but April to-day. The engineers' mess-
room boy, with bare fat arms, went by the cabin,
singing. At breakfast we heard that Chips, who had retired
to his bunk for some days past to mend a leg damaged
when the hatches were in danger, had met with a
still more serious misfortune. We fell into a mood
of silent and respectful compassion. There was
nothing to be said. Chips had lost his Victoria Cross.
He was an old hero in trouble. The few of us who
were British there — true, most of us were Germans,
Dutchmen, Scandinavians, and Portuguese — felt we
represented The Country. Chips limped about the
forecastle with reproach in his face, and we felt we
were petty in noticing his face was also dirty, though
it certainly was difficult to avoid seeing that too,
perhaps because, and this can be said for us, the
dirt was of longer standing than the reproach. Then
again it is common knowledge that Chips sleeps in
straw, having no mattress.
Chips' story we knew. It had been whispered
about the ship. He was at the Siege of Alexandria,

54 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
and a shell fell near a group of men on his ship.
Chips picked it up and dropped it overboard before
the fuse was finished. The Doctor and I felt especi
ally responsible, for a reason I cannot easily explain,
it is so vague, and we told Chips we would help him
in his search for his lost treasure. This took us to
Chips' sea-chest, and amid a group of mask-like faces
— for how could foreigners guess what this mattered
to us ? — we hunted carefully for Chips his aureole.
We found — but I suppose even Victoria Cross heroes
must dirty their socks. There were other things also.
Yet it was out of one of these very other things,
which were, I think, shirts, that there dropped, when
the Doctor picked up the garment, a little package
wrapped in newspaper. Chips, from his berth, gave
a cry of joy. The Doctor and I, smiling too, looked
upon the old man feeling that we had acted for you
all. Chips, secretive with his sacrosanct emblem,
was putting the little packet under his coverlet,
when a low foreign sailor snatched it from him.
The Cross fell to the deck. I recovered it from the
feet instantly in a white passion, and chanced to
look at it. It confirmed that one, who is named
Chips here, was something in the Royal and Ancient
Order of Buffaloes.
Coming back from the fo'castle, suddenly I felt
as the man of the suburbs does when, bowed with
months of black winter and work in a city alley, he
is, without any warning, transfigured on his own
doorstep one morning. There as before is his
familiar shrub, dripping with rain. Yet is it as
before ? It points a black finger at him. But the
finger has a polished green nail.

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 55
He is translated. His ears are opened, and there
comes for the first time that year the silver whistle
of the starlings. A touch of South is in the air. His
burden falls.
The cloudy sky was not grey now, but pearly, for
it was translucent to the sun. More than day had
come ; life was born. There was ichor in the day.
They were not dark northern waves that baffled us,
but we were shoved and rocked by the send of a
long nacreous ocean swell, firm but kind, from the
south-west. The iron ship which had been repulsive
to the touch, for its face had been glassy and cold,
was now drying a warm rust red, like earth of Devon
in spring, and was responsive. You could rest
agamst its iron body and feel yourself grow. I
saw the Chief outside his cabin in his shirt sleeves,
gazing overseas between the stanchions of the boat
deck, smoking in the evident luxury of full comfort
and release. Involuntarily, he danced the two-step
as she rolled. " Got anything to read ? " he asked.
Now that reminded me. We have no library, of
course, but we have a circulation of books on
board. There are no common shelves ; but the
book you left thoughtlessly on the skylight five
minutes ago, while you went to find some matches,
is gone when you return. And you, if you see a
book lying open and unprotected in a cabin, glance
round warily, dash in, and take it ; very often only
to discover to your bitter disappointment that it
is one of your own, and not an adventurous and
unread stranger. The Chief's question reminded me
that the day we left Swansea a lady (and a friend
qf poor Jack, the public is well aware) sent us a bale

56 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
of literature. We blessed her when we saw its bulk,
looking at it as oxen might look at a truss of hay,
for that was its size and shape. Though it proved
to be shavings and a cruel blow to the animals, as
you shall hear.
Here was the very day to get at that bale, and
impatiently I rolled it into the open. It was trussed
with great care, so I tore away a corner of the wrap
pings, dived in a hand, and hauled out a copy of
"Joy Bells for Young Christians," the November
number of 1899.
Well. Anyhow, it was a clean copy, and I put it
by as the portion of our baldheaded German steward.
This disappointment made me pause, though.
Here was going to be a long job for the Purser, sorting
out this. Supposing there were anything nutritious
in the bale I did not mind the labour of the unpack
ing and the distribution; but if the bulk of the
consignment was hailed, so to speak, by "Joy Bells,"
then it would be better to call a deck hand and get
the package overside before the ship was littered
with too much of this joy. A Brazilian stoker, as he
passed, saw me standing in thought, and I suppose
imagined — for he could not ask — that I wanted to
cut the string, but had no knife. Before I could
stop him, he, smiling a knowing and friendly smile,
whipped out a blade from his rear ; and at once we
stood ankle-deep in literature. There was a land
slide near me of Infant Methodists (dates unknown)
and I gave the Brazilian an armful for his kindness.
Our dear unknown friend at Swansea, with her eye
on our sailor-like but yet immortal souls, had heard,
no doubt, at the annual meeting of the Society for the

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 57
Succor of Seamen, at Caxton Hall, Westminster
(held on the 29th of every February), what simple
and barbarous and yet, in the main, considering our
origins and circumstances, what worthy fellows we
were. But she was not told at the meeting that the
wealthy shipowners, subscribers to the society, and
whose presence there made Caxton Hall seem nautical,
have a way of signing on crews at continental ports
because wages rule lower there; and that conse
quently not one of our men was moved by Christian
English, but only by mates English, and then not
so very quickly. The officers and engineers were
English, and there the sailors' friend was right in
her surmise ; but I do not see how she could have
done more to put in awful jeopardy the soul of
our wise and spectacled chief engineer, for instance,
than by approaching him with a winning and philan
thropic smile, under the impulse to do him good with
a statement of her rehgion in words of one syllable.
He would have met her politely, I know ; but after
she had gone 
Let her try to imagine her own feelings if our
Chief, uninvited and blankly unmindful, invaded the
exclusive inner circle of Swansea society, and ap
proached her in the midst of her own with the childish
notion of instructing her in the first principles of
his pronounced Pyrrhonism ; or say he went to her
as a colporteur of the Society for Instructing the
Intelligence and Manners of Leisured Folk. But I
must say for our chief that this cannot be even
supposed. He would never offer the lowliest being
such an indignity.
We pulled and dragged at the escaped mass of

58 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
periodicals, looking for something good, but found no
pearls had been cast before us. There were parish
magazines and temperance monthlies, there were
rehgious almanacs for the years we have lost ; by
some sporting chance there were even a few back
numbers of the " Monumental Mason." It is plain the
latter could be considered an added grievance, even
though they were put in as a kindly reminder of our
narrow lease here. It was an aggravation of the
original offence to sailors who, when their short
term here closes, have to make shift with some fire
bars at their heels. What is Aberdeen granite and
indelible gold lettering to such men but a hint of
the hardships which follow them even beyond the
end ?
So overboard went the lot — I may as well tell the
whole truth, overboard also went the evangelical
hymn books, new though they were. I will only
suppress the advice cried to the gulls astern as the
literature went floating and flying in their direction.
We had to rely for our reading on what had been
brought aboard by our crowd, a collection which
gradually revealed itself in single books and magazines.
There was, for example, the " Morphology of the
Cryptogamia," an exhaustive work which gave me
much pleasure in wondering how it got aboard at all.
The chief mate used it as a wedge between his open
door and the bulkhead, to prevent the miserable
knocking as the ship lolled about. He would not
lend me that book, because it jammed into the opening
nicely ; but I borrowed from him " Three Fingered
Jack, the Terror of the Antilles," and I made him
a complete gift in return of " Robert Elsmere "

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 59
which I found marooned on a bunker hatch as I
came along. There you see the delightful chance and
hazardous character of our literature.
I prided myself on the select reading I had brought
aboard with me. But what devilish black art the
sea air worked on those choice volumes, however, I
cannot explain. I have no means of knowing.
But there they are, their covers bitten by cock
roaches, and the words inside bleached and sterilised
of all meaning. There they will stop ; Henry James,
too. For what is th-**- use of him when big seas are
running ? He would be a magician indeed who
could capture our minds then. You get the right
amplitude of leisure and the flat undistracting cir
cumstances he demands, the emptiness and the
immobility necessary, when you are waiting for cargo
long in coming at a low seaboard. I suppose we
want the representation of life only when we are not
very much alive. In heavy weather there is no
doubt old newspapers make the best reading, especi
ally if they have good bold advertisements. For I
know it requires the same courage and concentration
needed ashore for reading Another Great Speech
by the Premier ; indeed, the steel blue quality of
deadly resolution used only by men of letters who
write biographies and spin literary causeries, to
manage even novels when great billows are moving.
The mind is inclined to absent itself then. Then it is
you put all reading aside with a promise of a long
and leisurely festival of books when the ship is
steaming uniformly down the unvarying " trades."
But when you get near the neighbourhood of the
constant sun, during the day you fall asleep over

60 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
" Three Fingered Jack " and the old magazines
which you had on your knees while musing on the
colours of the sea and the mounting architecture
of the clouds ; and beyond sundown listen to the
mate's accordion or the engineer's flute. Perhaps,
moved by the hu-s-s-h of the waves, the silky and
purple dark, and the loneliness of your little company
under the mid-ocean stars, tentatively (though your
shipmates are very forgiving) lift a ballad yourself ;
for something is expected of you, and singing seems
right. Of all the books aboard the " Capella " I got most
out of the Skipper's sailing directories and his charts.
Talk of romance ! There was that chart -room under
the bridge, across its open doors on either side cream
ing waves going by in the moonlight, and the steamer
inclining each side alternately, and the shadows of
the rigging sliding back and forth on the pale deck.
You cannot know what romance is till you are in
seas you have never sailed before, where the marks
will be few when landfall comes ; that ocean where
the Skipper is to find his own way by his lore of the
sea, and may even ask your opinion about alterna
tives ; and there read sailing directories. The
romance of these books cannot be translated or
quoted. It would leave them, as though a glimmer
went out, if you attempted to take them from that
chart-room where pendant things are swaying
leisurely, where you can hear the bells tell the watches,
and the skipper's gold-laced cap is on the mahogany
table. The South Atlantic Sailing Directions, our
own guide, is fine, especially when it gets down to
the uninhabited islands in far southern latitudes.

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 61
I do not think this noble volume is included in the
best hundred books, but I know it can release the
mind from the body.
But what's this talk of landfalls ? as the old man
would say. There will be no landfall yet for us ;
and this is Christmas Eve. I knew it was an aus
picious occasion of some kind, for the steward just
went aft with two big plum cakes cuddled in his apron.
That made me look at the calendar. We are now
800 miles out, and the steamer has reached six knots.
This was the best night we had yet found. The
steamer was on an even keel, with but occasional
spasms of sharp rolling, for there was no sea, but
only old ocean breathing deeply and regularly in its
sleep, and sometimes making a slight movement.
The light of the full moon was the shining ghost of
noon. The steamer was distinct but immaterial,
saliently accentuated, as a phantom. A deep
shadow would have detached the forecastle head
but for a length of luminous bulwark which still
held it, and some quiet voices of men who were
within the shadow, yarning. The line of bulwark
and the murmuring voices held us together. The
prow as it dipped sank into drifts of lambent snow.
The snow fled by the steamer's sides, melting and
musical. Two engineers off duty leaned on the
rails amidships, smoking, looking into the vacancy
in which the moonlight laid a floor of troubled silver.
As if drawn by its fight a few little clouds were
poised near the moon, grouped round the bright
heart of the night. There was the moon and its
small company of clouds, and ourselves below in
our own defined allotment of sea. The only thing

62 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
outside and far was Sirius, burning independently
in the east, looking unwinking through the wall of
night into our world.
On such a night and with Christmas morning but
sixty minutes away it would have been wasting life to
go to bed. I glanced expectantly at the door of the
Chief's cabin, and saw indeed it was open, a yellow
rectangle within which was the profile of the Chief
beneath his lamp, talking to somebody. The Doctor
was there, and he made room for me on the settee.
Then the captain joined us, and I perched myself
on the wash-stand.
" Well, we can undress to-night when we turn in,"
said the Chief. (None of us had, so far.) In a long
silence which filled the cabin with tobacco smoke I
could hear the engines below uplifted in confident
song. " Now they're walking round," said the Skipper,
nodding his head. " Now she feels it."
• • • • • •
When we met thus, between the hours of nine and
midnight, as was our irregular habit, the talk first
was always desultory, and about our own ship and
our own circumstances, for the concerns of our little
world strangely occupied our minds, as you would
think, and the large affairs of that great world we
had left, of which we heard now no sound nor rumour,
had lessened in the mind, faded and vanished, all the
huge consequence and loud clangour of it, so that
now there was an empty horizon astern, and nothing
between us and that void but a few gulls, like small
and pursuing recollections. Our little microcosm,
afloat and sundered in the wastes, was occupied in its

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 63
own polity. We talked of the carpenter's bad leg ;
complained of the cook's bread ; heard that Tinker
the dog, being young, had the habit at night, while
honest folk slept, of eating the saloon mats ; grumbled
that the ship's tobacco was mouldy. The deck was
getting dry, the Skipper said, and now we could
get the men chipping it, and then it could be
tarred. " That donkeyman," said the Skipper, " that
man wastes the fresh water. I'll have a lock put on
the pump handle. He works it as if we were laid
on to the main. I spoke to him about it this morn
ing." The fresh water is a vital affair with us. We
may not drink the water of the country to which we
are bound, so eighty tons of Welsh mountain spring
is in our cleansed and whitewashed tanks. Woe to
the man caught overflowing his can, if an officer sees
him. " The handle can't be locked," said the Chief,
"because its next to the galley. The cook wants
it all day long."
"Well, let me catch anyone wasting it. We'd
look all right with a lot of dysentery, drinking that
river water out there."
This common meeting-place of ours, the Chief's
cabin, is on a highway of the ship, being on the
direct route from the poop to the bridge, and so it
is a hostel, for the chief is a kindly and popular
man, big and robust in body and mind ; though he
has a knack, at odd and unexpected times, of being
candid in a way that shocks, treading on corns with
out ruth, the skipper's particularly, when their two
departments are at a difference.
This cabin was one which I always visited first,

64 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
for, especially in the morning when other folk had
not rubbed the night out of their eyes, and so looked
darkly upon their fellows, my friend the Chief had
the early eye of a child and the soaring spirit of the
lark. I nsver met him when he had got out of bed
on the wrong side. His cabin became a refuge to
me, for, unlike the Doctor's and my own place (we
both were birds of passage, therefore our cabins were
cold and stark), the Chief's was comfortable with
settled furniture, cosy and habitable, like a fixed
home. There was a wicker chair, with cushions,
and a writing-desk where the engineer's log lay handy
and bearing some plug tobacco, freshly cut, on its
cover, and a pipe rack above the desk carrying a
most foul assortment waiting their turns again for
favour. Portraits of the Chief's family were on
the walls, smiling boys and girls, with their mother
in a chief place, looking upon daddy by proxy.
There was a book-shelf bearing some engineering
manuals, a few novels and magazines, a tape measure,
some gauge glasses, some tin whistles, a flute, and a
palm leaf fan. Above the wash-stand was a rack
with glasses and a carafe. A settee ran along one
side, and his bunk upon the other side. There we sat
on Christmas Eve, while the wicker chair bent and
complained with the Skipper's weight as he swayed
to the leisurely rocking of the ship. The tobacco
smoke floated in coils and blue smears in the room.
A bottle of Hollands rested for security on the bed,
and we held our glasses on our knees.
The pallid and puffy face of the steward* a very
honest man secretly free with his small store of
apples on my account because I am green and my

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 65
palate not yet used to the flatness of tinned pro
visions, locked in on us from the right. " Vhere is
der dog, sir ? I haf not seen der dog." " Must be
about,"we cried. "We had seen him," we said, "nosing
about the poop for rats, or asleep on the saloon mat,
or padding round the casing looking for friends."
" But no, I haf looked. He is not found. Vhere is
der dog ? " A hole in our little community, it was
apparent from our intent looks, could not be thought
of with equanimity. Tinker's importance became
quite large. The second engineer passed the door,
caught the drift of our anxious converse, and turned
to say the dog was then asleep in his room. " Ach !
zat is all right." We struck matches for our pipes
again. " That dog, I shouldn't like to lose him," said the
skipper, stroking his beard. "There's no luck in
that, I shot a dog once on a ship ; and first we ran
into a blow and lost a lot of gear, and then the mate
got his hand smashed, and then everything got cross-
grained till I'd have paid, ah, fifty pounds to have
had the brute back again, and an ugly customer he
was. Ah, you can smile, Doctor, but there it is. I'm
not superstitious and never was. But you can't tell
me. Look at the things that happen. When I was
a youngster, my ship was off Rio, and I dreamt my
father was dead. I took my bearings and the time.
I dreamed my father died in a red brick house with
a laylock tree by the door and that tree was in
blossom plain enough to smell. I didn't know the
house. There was a path of clean red bricks leading
up to the porch, through a garden. I didn't see my
father. But you know what dreams are hke— no

66 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
sense in them — there the house was and not a soul
in sight. I knew he was dying inside it."
" How do you account for that ? Have you got it
down in your books ? I lay you haven't. I forgot
all about that dream. Long after I was at Cape
Town and met my brother. That reminded me.
After a bit I said to him, ' Father's dead.' * Yes,'
he said, ' but how did you know ? ' Said I,
' Was the house like this ? ' and I told him.
' Yes,' he said, ' it was like that. A place he was
staying at in Essex. But how did you know ? '
I didn't tell him. What's the good ? He wouldn't
have believed it. People don't."
All through the anxious time when we were being
soused and buffeted I noticed how our company,
every man of them, even the Pyrrhonist, saw omens
in all the chance variety of the vast menace under
the frown of which we huddled in our iron box;
porpoises alongside ; one of Mother Cary's dark
brood accompanying us, glancing about the vagaries
of the flowing hills with swift precision ; the form
of a cloud ; a loom far out, as though day were there
at least. The fall of a portrait in the Chief's room
once set him wondering and melancholy. Again,
when the dog whined and moped, the Skipper eyed
the animal narrowly, as though the creature had
prescience but. could tell us what it knew only by
drooping and quivering its hind quarters. You
might have thought that Fate, dumb and cruel, but
a little relenting for something inevitably to come
to our mishap, were trying to stretch a point, and
so induced the Skipper to put his shirt on inside out
one morning, after dreaming he saw drowned rats,

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 67
in case the horse were not too bhnd to see both the
nod and the wink.
The Sphinx makes subtle dumb motions, as it were,
when closely regarded. I do not wonder if it does.
Sometimes in those dark days I thought I got a hint
or two. I cannot tell you what they were. The
weather grew brighter afterwards and I forgot them.
From our narrow and weltering security, where the
wind searched through us like the judgment eye,
I know, looking out upon the wilderness in turmoil
where was no help, and no witness of our undoing,
where the gleams were fleeting as though the very
day were riven and tumbling, that I saw the filmy
shapes of those things which darken the minds of
primitives. While the sky is changeful, and there
are storms at sea when our fellows are absent, and
mischance and death are veiled but here, we shall
have gods and ghosts. The sharp-sighted collectors
of old brain-lumber and such curios may still keep
busy, and tie up their dry bundles of mythology
and religions ; but I myself could make plenty more.
So it was my shipmates' yarns were most of the
dire kind, with some dim warning precedent. I do
not recall a story that was gay, except those of the
wanton sort. They were of close calls and of women,
as, I suppose, have been those of all hard livers, from
the cave men on.
Eight bells were rung on the bridge, and like a
faint echo in a higher pitch, answered from the
fo'castle. Christmas morning ! By my pocket com
pass we toasted the folk at home. We had heard a
good many stories of wreck this night, and the
Chief was now at his contribution to the unseasonable

68 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
memories. (" I've had enough of it. Here goes,"
said the Doctor ; and he went.) " Don't leave us.
It lets in the draught. Well, the compliments to
you. This typhoon — I had had four others — but
this one made me think it was good-bye. She was a
small steamer, that ' Samuel Plimsoll,' and old,
but well-behaved. But her hght nearly went out
in that blow. It was that dark you could find
nothing but the noise, and we were just the same as
a chunk of wood under a waterfall, because the
Lord knows how many feet of water were in the
engine-room, for she was rolhng so. Her fires were
out. She had a list of 22 degrees to port. She
simply lay in it, and it went over her. Every time
she rolled over on the deep side, thinks I, this is the
last of her. All this, mind you, went on for two
days, and the skipper was in the chart-room, waiting.
I've found that when the danger is not much you get
excited, but when there seems no chance you get
cool and cunning and try to make one. One time
I thought she seemed easier, and I was able to get
the donkey engine going. I felt better as soon as
I heard the steam, even though it was only in the
donkey. Thinks I, there's power, and it's mine—
a canful of steam to a typhoon. It was a chance to
laugh at. Then I took the other engineers with me
and we went below. The water there, full of cinders
and trash, pouring through the gear as she turned
from side to side, made it look a pretty poor show.
You see, the donkey wouldn't work the pumps, for
the coal and muck was sucked in. So I took a
basket and got into the tank, holding the basket
under the pump. The water was up to my neck,

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 69
and every time she rolled I was ducked. But the
dodge worked, and that list of hers to port was a bit
of luck in its way, for it helped us to get the star
board boiler going. When I saw the throws moving,
and the wash angry when it splashed on the hot
metal, I said, ' So much for your old typhoon.' We
were not counted out then. We crawled under th-**}
lee of an island, and lay for four days repairing her.
The funny thing was when we got to Hong Kong
the papers were full of our loss. ' " Samuel Plimsoll "
lost with all hands.' It was funny to see a bill like
that. I met the placard as it came running round
a corner, and it made me stand and shuffle my feet
on the ground to see if the earth was all right. I
knew the editor of that paper, and I was then going
up to give him something good. And here he was
making money out of us like that. He stood at the
door of his office and saw me coming. I went up
laughing, waving his paper in my hand. He looked
quite surprised. His mouth was wide open. ' You're
a nice sort of chap,' I said."
......
Christmas Day. In case it has become necessary
for me to show again the symbols of verity, as this
is a book of travel, here they are : " Lat. 37.2 N.,
long. 14.14 W. Light wind and moderate swell
from S.W. Vessel rolling heavily at intervals.
961 miles out. Miles by engines 226. Actual
distance travelled (because of the swell on our star
board bow) 197 miles." I cannot see that these
particulars do more than help me out with the book,
but as they have been considered essential in narra
tives of voyaging, here they are, and much good

70 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
may they do anybody. Thoreau, in one of his
quaintly superior moods when speaking of travel,
said, "It is not worth while going round the world
to count the cats in Zanzibar." In nearly every
book of travel this is proved to be true. They show
it was not worth the while, seeing it was either to
shoot cats or to count degrees of latitude. (As for
me, I have no reason whatever for being at sea.)
Consider Arctic travel. I have read long rows of
books on that, but recall few emotional moments.
The finest passage in any book of Arctic travel is in
Warburton Pikes' " Barren Grounds," where he
quotes what the Indian said to the missionary who
had been speaking of heaven. The Indian asked,
" And is it hke the land of the Musk-ox in summer,
when the mist is on the lakes, and the loon cries very
often ? "
You feel at once that the country the Indian saw
around him would be easily missed by us, even when
in the midst of it. For takrBg- the bearings of such
a land, the sextant, and the miles already travelled,
would not be factors to help much. Now the Indian
knew nothing of artificial horizons and the aids to
discovering where they are which strangers use.
But in summer the mists of his lakes were but the
vapour of his musings, the penumbra of the un-
fathomed deeps of his mind whereon he paddled his
own canoe **•¦ and when the wild-fowl called, it was his
memory heard ; it was his thought become vocal
then while he dreamed on. I myself learned that
the treasures found in travel, the chance \rewards
of travel which make it worth while, cannot be
accounted beforehand, and seldom are matters a

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 71
listener would care to hear about afterwards ; for
they have no substance. They are no matter.
They are untranslatable from their time and place ;
and like the man who unwittingly lies down to
sleep on the tumulus where the little people dance
on midsummer night, and dreams that in the place
where man has never been his pockets were filled with
fairy gold, waking to find pebbles there instead,
so the traveller cannot prove the dreams he had,
showing us only pebbles when he tries. Such fair
things cannot be taken from the magic moment.
They are but filmy, high in the ceiling of your
thoughts then, rosy and sunlit by the chance of the
light, transitory, melting as you watch. You come
down to your lead again. These occasions are not
on your itinerary. They are like the Indian's lakes
in summer. They have no names. They cannot
be found on the best maps. Not you nor any other
will ever discover them again. Nor do they fill the
hunger which sent you travelling ; they are not
provender for notebooks. They do not come to
accord with your mood, but they come unaware to
compel, and it is your own adverse and darkling
atoms that are changed, at once dancing in accord
with the rare incidence of that unreasonable and
transcendent moment of your world, the rhythm of
which you feel, as you would the beat of drums.
And what are these things ?— but how can we tell ?
A strip of coral beach, as once I saw it, which was
as all other coral beaches ; but the ship passed
close in, and by favour of the hour and the sun this
strand did not glare, but was resplendent, and the
colours of the sea, green, gold, and purple, were not

72 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
its common virtues, but the emotional and passing
attar of those hues. There was the long, slow labour
ing of our burdened tramp in the Atlantic storm.
Or one April, and a wild cherry-tree in blossom by
an English hedge, a white cloud tinctured with rose,
and in it moving a dozen tropical chaffinches ; the
petals were on the grass.
And now, this is Christmas morning. I am in
the Chief's bunk, and he still sleeps on the settee.
We fell asleep where we lay yarning on our backs
after midnight. I wake at the right moment, opening
my eyes with the serene and secure conviction that
things are very well. The slow rocking of the ship
is perfect rest. There is no sound but the faint tap-
tap of something loose on the desk and responding
to the ship's movements. The cabin is strangely
illuminated to its deepest corner by an extra
ordinary light, as though the intense glow of a
rare dawn had penetrated even our ironwork. On
the white top of the cabin a bright moon quivers
about, the shine from hve waters sent up through
the round of our port. When we lean over, the
port shows first the roof of the alleyway dappled
with bright reflections ; then a circle of sky, which
the horizon soon halves ; and then the dazzhng
white and blue of the near waves ; we reverse.
This is life. This is what I have come for. I do
not repose merely in a bunk. I am prone and easy
in the deepest assurance of good. This conviction
has penetrated even the unconsciousness of the Chief ;
he snores in profound luxury. If in a ship you are
brought sometimes too cruelly close to the scrutiny
of the terms of your narrow tenure, expecting

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 73
momentarily to see the document torn across by
invisible fingers, yet nowhere else do you feel those
terms to be so suddenly expanded in the sun. And
nowhere else is got such release, secure and absolute,
from the nudging of insistent trifles. There is
nothing between your eyes and the confines of your
own place. Empty day is all round. In the entire
circle there is not the farthest impertinent interrup
tion — through all the degrees there is not one fool
standing in the light ; and you yourself are on no
body's horizon. No history stains that place. There
is not a black doubt anywhere. It is the first day
again, and no need yet for a rubbish heap.
Yet when, singing to myself, I went outside to
matins, I found Sandy our third engineer with the
toothache. So much of truth is got from being a
gymnosophist and regarding your own toes with
aloof abstraction on a sUnny Christmas morning.
I became Sandy's courage for him instead, took his
arm firmly, and led him aft to the doctor. We
would start a rubbish heap for a pristine world
with a decayed tooth. Something to be going
on with.
Seeing we were almost off Madeira we had some
amount of right to the July sun under which we had
run. For the first time since the Mumbles our decks
were quite dry, and cherry red with rust. There
were glittering crusts of salt in odd places. At
eight bells (midday) the captain ordered a general
holiday, except for the routine duties ; and the
donkey-man appeared to startle us as the apparition
of a stranger on the ship, for he had a clean face,
though his eyes still were dark and spectral, and he

74 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
wore a suit of new dungarees, stiff and creased from
a paper parcel, but just opened, out of a Swansea
slop shop. His mates were some seconds realising
him. Then they made derisive signs, and the boldest
some ribald cries. I thought their resentment was
really aroused by Donkey's new shirt ; it was that
touch which pushed matters too far, and made him
unfriendly. He saw this himself. Soon he changed
the new shirt for one that had been rendered neutral
in the stoke-hold and the bucket.
There was something neutral, like Donkey's old
shirt, about most of our crowd. Each one of the
mob which gathered with mess kids a little before
midday about the galley door seemed reduced, was
faded in a noticeable measure from the sharp and
strong pattern of a man. Their conversation about
the galley was always in subdued mutterings, not
direct, but out of the mouth corners, sideways.
Their only independence was in the negligence of
their attitudes. They might have been keeping in
mind an austere and invisible presence, whose swift
words from nowhere might at any time cleave their
soft babble. If I made to pass through them the
babble ceased, and from limp poses they sprang
upright in the narrow way to let me pass, their eyes
cast down. A man who had not seen me coming,
but still sprawled on the rail, talking quietly, would
be nudged by his neighbour. It struck me this
attitude would change when they knew us better;
but it never did. These deckhands and firemen were
mostly youngsters, steadied by a few older hands.
Chips and Donkey were the veterans. In that
crowd the boatswain was the admirable figure. He

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 75
was a young Britisher, tall, upright, and weighty,
with a smiling, respectful eye in which sometimes,
I thought, there was a faint hint of mockery. He
had an easy balance and confidence in his movements
which made him worth watching when about his
business. Clean shaven when he came aboard, he
now had a tawny beard which caught gold lights,
and it was singularly good on his weather-darkened
face. He seldom wore a cap, for it could have added
little protection to the taut vigour of his hair, and
would have spoilt, as perhaps he himself guessed,
that proper flourish and climax to the poise of his
head. Donkey was an Irishman, and he was the huge
frame of what, maybe thirty years before, had been
a powerful man. This morning his big cadaverous
face, white only on the bony ridges surrounding
the depressions of the temples, the cheeks, and the
dark pits of the eyes, and with the shadowy hollow
of the mouth which gaped through the weight of the
massive jaw, would have resembled, from a little
distance, that of the skeleton head of one of the
monsters in a geological gallery, but for the dewlap
sustained by sinews running from his chin down his
throat. Donkey was a silent man, and never caught
your glance as you passed him, but lumbered along
with so much of the surprising celerity of a gaunt
elephant that you thought you might hear the rasp
of his loose clothes. He was a simple and docile
fellow. I never heard him speak, but he used to
come to the Chief, fill the door with his massive front,
his small eyes which expressed nothing and were
but sparks of life, looking nowhere in particular,

76 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
and make guttural sounds; and the Chief, being
used to him, understood. At sea Donkey did his
small duties hke a plain but cumbersome mechanism
that had somewhere in it an obscure point of ration
ality. When ashore, though, he was said to go mad,
and to roll trampling and trumpeting through the
squalid littoral of the world; being brought
aboard afterwards an enormity of lax bones and
flesh, with the cogitating glim in his bulk quite
doused. Of the others, there was a Teutonic bunch of lads,
deck-hands, which I never succeeded in segregating,
they looked so much alike. They had pimpled,
idle faces, and neutral eyes, cast down when they
sidled by one, thin down on their chins, and grimy
raiment which, by the look of it, was an integument
never cast after we left port. One name would have
covered that lot, and frequently I heard the mates
use it. But Olsen, the Norwegian with a blond
moustache which covered his mouth like a fog-pro
tector, and stern blue eyes, was a sailor. The fire
men made a better bunch. There was among them
a swarthy Brazilian, whose constant smile seemed
ever on the point of breaking into song, but that he
was always chewing the end of a sweat rag he wore
twisted round his neck. The happy feature of our
firemen was a Dutchman, whose hollow face was full
of silent woe and endurance. He was our chief joy.
When once we found the sun, he then appeared in a
single garment, trousers and braces cut in one piece
of brown canvas, hauled up well under his arms,
leaving his slab feet remote and forlorn. His torso
was bare, a dancing girl in red and blue tattooed

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 77
on his chest. He wore a bowler hat without a
brim. We will get Christmas over. It was a pagan
festival. Looking back at it, I see— with the astonish
ment of the sedate who is native to a geometrical
suburb where the morning train follows the night
and every numbered house shelters a moral agnostic
— I see a dancing baccanal with free gestures who
fades, as I look back intently, doubting my senses,
in a roseous haze. The lawless movements of that
wild, bright and laughing figure, its exultant blas
phemy, its confident mockery, are remembered by
me as though once I had been admitted to the green
room of heaven. Surely I have seen a god whose
deathless knowledge derides the solemn gods, be
hind the curtain. It was Christmas night, and our
little " Capella," our point of night shine, a star
moving through the void to its dark destiny, filled
the vault with its song, while its fellows in the
heavens stood round. Christmas is over.
The day following was Sunday, a grey day of
penance, the men soberly washing their shirts in
buckets under the forecastle head, smoking moody
pipes. The garments were tied to any convenient
gear where they could hang free. The sky was
leaden. This grey day was distinguished by the
strange phenomenon of an horizon which was almost
level; the skyline and the clouds did not slant
first this way, then that. The swell had almost
gone. Already I began to feel the large patience
and tranquillity of a mind losing its shadows, and
contemplating the light and space of a long voyage

78 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
in which the same men do the same things in the
same place daily under the centre of the empty sky.
Sitting on a hatch with the Doctor, smoking, we
confessed, with ease at the heart, and with minds in
which nervous vibrations had ceased, that we must
have reached the place that was nowhere, and that
now time was not for us. We had escaped you all.
We were free. There was not anything to engage
us. There was nothing to do, and nobody who
wanted us. Never before had I felt so still and
conscious of myself. I realised, with a little start
of surprise, that it was Me who felt the warm air,
and who looked at the slow pulse of the waters, and
the fulgent breaks in the roof, and heard the droning
of the wake, and not that mere skin, eyes and ears
which, as in London, break in upon our preoccupied
minds with agitating sensations ; and I took in this
newly-discovered world of ocean and cloudland and
my own sure identity centred therein with the com
placency of an immortal who will see all the things
which do not matter pass away. When we left
England we were tense, and sometimes white (though
there were others who went red) about a Great Crisis
in our Country's History. The Doctor and I arrived
on board, detached from the opposing armies in the
impending conflict, and at first put our hands swiftly
to our swords every ten minutes or so during meals.
Of that crisis only one small gull now was left, and
he was following us astern with a melancholy cry
at intervals, of which we took no more notice. (And
that gull departed, I see by my diary, the very next
day.) So ended the Great Crisis. I did not even note

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 79
the ship's position at the time, though I can see now
that was a serious fault for which future historians
may blame me. I can but state vaguely that it was
about sixty miles north-west of the Fortunate Isles.
The change in the quality of the sun and air became
most marked; I remember that. The horizon
expanded to a surprising distance. According to
letters from home, sent about that date, which I
received long afterwards, I am unable to find that
similar phenomena were witnessed in England.
Probably they were but local. These manifestations
in the heavens filled the few of us privileged to
witness them with awe, and a new faith in the power
and compassion of God. Nothing further of note
occurred on this day, except that Chips, as a further
miracle, suddenly was raised whole from where he
lay in his bunk with a useless leg. His leg, you may
remember, was damaged in the gale off Cornwall.
The Doctor, going his rounds, was surprised to find
Chips dancing the hoola-hoola in the forecastle, and
a stoker, with a cut eye, wailing for a lost half bottle
of gin taken from his box while he was on duty.
Thereafter Chips returned to work, his leg becoming
halt again only when he knew we saw him stepping
it too bhthely. • •••«•
"Beer. 27. Distance run for past 24 hours to
midday 219. Total distance 1177 miles. Fine
weather. Glass rising."
Have you ever heard of the monotony of a long
voyage ? The same sky you know, the same
waters, the same deck ; and now I can see it should
be added, the same old self, dismayed by the con-

80 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
templation of its features daily, week after week,
within that spacious empty hall, where is no escape
from the bright stare overhead which reveals your
baldness and blemishes without ruth. You get
found out. You want to mix with the mob again,
to get lost in the sameness of your fellows. He who
goes travelling should leave his self at home, or as
much of it as is not wanted on the voyage. It is
surprising to find how little you want of yourself.
The ideal traveller would venture out merely as a
disembodied thought, or, at most, as an eye.
A mere eye would see no monotony, for the sky
may be the same sky, but its moods are like those
of the same woman ; and the ocean, though young
as the morning, is older than Asia — you never know
what to expect from that profound enigma. As for
the sunny deck, I see the Doctor sitting on a spare
spar, waiting for someone to sit beside him. The
Chief is filing a piece of small gear outside his cabin.
The Skipper is overlooking,- with a hard frown, a
group of men busy repairing his chart -room, which
is just foreward of the engine-room casing (I could
get a job from him at once for the asking, though I
shall not ask). The first mate is trying to be in
three places at once. The second mate patrols the
bridge. The German steward, who tells curious
stories in a Teutonised dialect of Shadwell, is hanging
mattresses and bed clothes over a boom. The men
are chipping and tarring the deck; and the boat
swain, bare-legged, wildly bearded, a sheath knife
on his hams, looks like a fine pirate brought to
menial tasks.
I have watched this day's monotonous sky on-

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 81
wards from the dawn. We are in the neighbour
hood of the Hesperides. For some early hours of
the morning it was grey. But the grey roof soon
broke with the incumbent weight of light, letting
sunshine through narrow fractures to the sea, far
out. There were partitions of thin gold in the dim
hall. The moving floor was patterned in day and
night. The low ceiling was fused where the day
poured through, became a candent vapour, vola
tilised. We had over us before breakfast the
ultimate blue, where a few cirrus clouds showed its
great height.
Then it was August. The sea ran in broad heavy
mounds, blue-black and vitreous, which hardly
moved our bulk. In the afternoon, the ocean, a
short distance from the ship, grew filmed and
opaque, a milky blue shot with purple shadows. Its
surface, though heaving, was smooth and flawless.
No light entered its deeps, but the radiant heat was
mirrored on it as on the pallor of fluid lava. The
water ploughed up by the bows did not break, but
rolled over viscidly. The sun dropped behind the
sea about a point west of our course. Night was
near. Yet still the high dome with its circular floor
the sea was magically illuminated, as by the proximity
of a wonderful presence. We, solitary and privileged
in the theatre, waited expectant. The doors of glory
were somewhere ajar. The western wall was clear,
shining and empty, enclosed by a proscenium of
amber flames. In the north-east, astern of us, were
some high fair-weather clouds, fike a faint host of
little cherubs, and from their superior galleries they
watched a light invisible to us ; it made their faces

82 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
bright. Beneath them the glazed sea was coral
pink. Even our own prosaic iron gear was sublim
ated; our ship became lustrous and strange. We
were the Argonauts, and our world was bright
with the veritable self-radiance of a world of
romance where the things that would happen were
undreamed of, and we watched for them from
our argosy's side, calm and expectant ; my
fellows were transfigured, looked huge, were rosy
and awful, immortals in that light no mortal is
given to see.
Now had been given me fellowship with the ship
and her men ; we were one body. I had been
absorbed by our enterprise. For a long while our
steamer was a harsh and foreign thing to me,
unfriendly to the eye, difficult to understand. But
now she had become intelligible and proper. She
and her men were all my world, and I could find my
way about that world in the dark. Getting used to a
ship has the process of the growth of a lasting friend
ship. Chance begins it. You regard your luck
askance, as you accept a new acquaintance with no
joy, to make the best of bim. But presently, to put
the matter at its lowest, you arrive at an under
standing. You have learned your friend's worth.
Familiarity would breed contempt only in the mouse-
hearted. You never have to account him afresh, or
he is no comrade ; there can be no surprises again,
no encounters with a stranger in him. His value, at
the least reckoning, is that you know his value. Any
hour of the day or night you can guess with assurance
where his mind would be found. And here my
" Capella " has no strange doors and startling de-

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 83
clivities and traps for me any more. I know her.
She is not exactly all she should be, but I apprehend
exactly what she is. If I hurt myself against her it
is my own fault. She is as familiar to me as home
now. I should resent any alteration. Having
learned to know her faults I like her as she is ; the
trestle bridge with its sagging hand-ropes and wob
bling stanchions (look out, you, when she rolls)
which crosses the main deck aft on the port side from
the amidships section, where I live, to the poop,
where the Doctor lives. The two little streets of
three doors each, to port and starboard of her amid
ships, the doors that open out under the shade of
the boat deck to sea. There, amidships also, are the
Chief's room and the galley, the engineers' messroom,
and the engine-room entrance ; but these last do
not open overside, but look aft, from a connecting
alley which runs across the ship to join the side alley
ways. Forward of these cabins is the engine-room
casing, where the 'midship deck broadens, but is
cumbered with bunker hatches (mind your feet, at
night, there) ; and beyond, again, is the chart -room,
and over the chart-room the bridge and the wheel-
house, from which is a sheer long drop to the main
deck foreward. At the finish of that deck is an iron
wall, with the entrance to the mysterious forecastle
in its centre ; and over that is the uplifted head
of our world watching our course, a bleak wind
swept place of rails, cable chains, and windlass. The
poop lias a timber deck, and there in fine weather
the deck chairs are. The poop is a place needing
exact navigation at night. Long boxes enclosing
the rudder chains are on either side of it. In the

84 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
centre is the saloon skylight, the companion, the
steward's ice chest, and the hand-steering gear. Also
there are two boats. I gained my night knowledge
of the poop deck by assault, and retained my gains
with sticking plaster. I am really proud of the
privilege which has been given me to roam now
this rolling shadow at night, this little dark cloud
blowing between the stars and the deep, the unseen
abyss below us with its profound reverberations,
and the height above with its scattered lights as
remote as the sounds in the deeps. With calm faith
in our swaying shadow I place my feet where nothing
shows, sure that my angel will bear me up. I put
out my hands and a support comes to them ; the
pitfalls have ladders for me, and by touching at
some places in the black shadow, as by magic, a
lighted and comfortable room at once materialises
for my rest in the void.
I think I liked her better as a formless shadow
after sundown. Whether it was then a noise in my
head, my tranquil thoughts murmuring in their
sleep, or whether the sound I heard was the deep
humming of the world's speed, I don't know ; what
ever it was, it was the only sound. Our mainmast-
head light was but a nearer star of the host. I was
not surprised to see one of the stars so close. I was
within the luminous porch of the Milky Way.
It was midnight. In that silence, where I was
alone in space, adrift on a night cloud in the con
stellations, the stars were really my familiars ; once,
when in London, though they had been named to
me and were constant there, they were far in the

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 85
place to which one lifts one's eyes from the dust and
traffic, nothing to do with London and with me. But
now there was no more dust and traffic. I was
among them at last. Splendid Orion was near and
vast in his hunting. The Pleiades no longer dimmered
on the very limit of vision, but were separate points
of delicate light. The night moved with diamond
fire. I was so far absent from the body that a human
voice beside me was like a surprising concussion with
something invisible in space. Turning, there was
the glow of Sandy's pipe. Sandy is an elderly man,
and an engineer. He was leaning over the rail,
cooling after his watch below. The magic of the
star shine had got into his mind too. He began
with guesses about the things which are not known,
parrying doubt with, " Ah — but it's hard to say ;
there are things  " ; and, " you bright young
fellers don't know everything " ; and, " somebody
told me a queer thing now."
"There was a bright young feller, same as your
self, and he was first mate of the 'Abertawe,' out
of Cardiff. Jack Driscoll was his name. It was a
funny thing happened to him. I heard about it
afterwards. "All the girls thought Jack Driscoll was so nice.
One of the girls was his owner's daughter, and she
was the best of the bunch, anyway, for she was an
only child, and her father would have given her the
earth. He was a good owner, was her father, as
things go in Cardiff. Do you know Cardiff ? Well,
a little goes a long way on the Welsh coast. Jack
was a smart sailor, with the first chance of the next

86 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
new boat, if he watched out. I reckon Jack was a
fool. Why, he needn't have gone to sea any more.
But what did he do ?
" Jack was one of them fellers who think if they
put a gold-laced cap saucy over one ear, and laugh
with the eyes, they can whistle up a duchess. And
I daresay Jack could in summer, in his white suit,
when he'd just shaved. He was a bit of all right was
Jack. He was a proper tall lad, and the way he
carried himself — It was a treat to see him move
about a ship. His black hair was like one of the big
fiddler chap's, and his smile would take in one of
his pals.
" Well, it was happy days for Jack. He got good
things to come to him. He didn't have to look for
'em, like me and you. He knew his work, too. He
was a good sailor. He could get off the mark, at the
first word, like a bird, and he never left a job while
there was a loose bit to it. Sometimes when there
was nothing doing it was pretty rotten, Jack would
say, to be stuck there in a Welsh tramp with a crowd
of dagoes, and drink coffee essence and condensed
milk out of a pint mug, and never go to a music hall
only once in six months. Jack reckoned it would be
fine to be brass-bound always, in one of the liners,
and have a deck hke a skating rink, and a lot of
lady passengers who wanted a chap hke him to talk
to them.
" He could tell stories, too, on the quiet, could
Jack. They were pretty blue, though. Sailor
stories. They were all about himself in the West
Coast ports. Do you know the Chili coast ? Well,
it's mind your eye there, and no half larks. They're

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 87
pretty handy with knives out there. But when
Jack was out for fun you couldn't stop him. He
was like all you young chaps. He wouldn't listen
to sense.
" The ' Abertawe ' went light ship to Barry, one
trip, from Buenos Aires, and Jack saw her snug, and
told all the men to be at the shipping office early and
sober in the morning, because they got in on a Sunday,
and Jack saw the old man safe on his Way to Cardiff,
and then shaved, and sang while he was shaving.
He got himself up west -end style, new yellow boots
and all, and tied his red tie Spanish fashion. And
he went down the quay, looking for anything that
was about, and he felt like the best man on the
Welsh coast.
" But Barry is a dull place. Do you know Barry ?
Well, it's a one-eyed God-forsaken town, made out
of odds and ends stuck down anywhere, all new
houses, docks, coal tips, and railway sidings, and no
where to go. It's best to stay aboard, in Barry.
Jack began to feel hke the only bird on a mud-bank.
He got out of the town, and walked along a road
till he came to an old woman sitting in the hedge,
with her back up against a telegraph post. Her face
was brown and wrinkled, and she had an orange-
coloured handkerchief round her face, and tied under
her chin. She was smoking a pipe, and looking at
her blucher boots. As Jack came along, she said,
' Tell your fortune, pretty gentleman ? ' Jack
laughed, and told her his face was his fortune.
" ' What do you see when you look in the glass ? '
said she.
" Now that was dead easy to Jack, because he

88 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
knew as well as the girls ; and he told her. There
was none of your silly modesty about Jack. Then
the old woman laughed ; but I reckon Jack thought
she was only pleased with him, because he made it
a point to make the mothers and the grandmothers
smile, the same as the girls.
" ' What do you see in this glass ? ' said she to
Jack. She was fumbling in her dress, and hauls
out a mirror like you see in the old-fashion shops,
a mirror made of silver, and it had a frame of ebony.
She polished it on her skirt, and gave it to him, and
told him to pass a bit of silver with the other hand.
Well, Jack saw sport, and he could always pay for
that, and he did what she said. But he only saw
himself in the mirror.
"'Hi,' said Jack, 'here, what's your little game
now. None of your larks now,' he said, ' or I'll ask
a policeman what he can see in this tin glass of
yours.' " ' You and your policeman,' she said. ' Look
now, my dandy boy, and see more than your
money's worth. And she rubbed the glass again.
Then Jack took another look. It was a dull day,
but that mirror was bright with sunshine. There
was something funny about that mirror. He saw
a fine place in it, all cool and white and gold, like you
see out East. It was a palace, I reckon. There was
a fountain in the middle, and some girls with not a
lot on, like some of the Amsterdam postcard girls,
were lying around, just anyhow. And there was
Jack's own self among 'em, and they were laughing
and talking to him. It was fine. Jack turned his
head, just like you would do, to see if the real place

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 89
was behind him. But, of course, there was the
funnels and topmasts of Barry, and the sky looked
hke rain. I bet it gave him a shock.
" ' Now you've seen what'll be your luck, honey,
if you're not careful,' said the old woman. ' Mind
your eye,' she said, ' mind your eye, you with the
saucy face. What's more,' she called after him,
' don't you speak to the girl with the odd eyes in
Cardiff, though I know you will, and sorry you'll
be.' " ' Go to the devil,' said Jack.
" He was just hke all you young chaps. Thought
she was an artful old shark who'd got his money
dead easy. That's what you always think. If you
don't understand anything, then there's nothing in
it. You call in at the next pub and chatter to the
barmaid. What happened ? Why, the very next
day the skipper came back, and told him the new
boat was near ready, and the owner wanted to see
him. Jack went, and forgot about everything,
except that he was going to be the handsome boy all
right with the owner's own daughter to look at him.
A pretty girl she was too. I saw her once, holding
up her skirts off the deck while she looked round.
The Skipper introduced me. ' Good morning, Mr
Brown,' she said to me.
" Coming out of the Great Western Station at
Cardiff Jack saw a place he'd never noticed before.
It wasn't Cardiff style. ' It's a new place,' Jack
thinks to himself, ' and a ripping good place it looks,'
for he was thirsty, and there was plenty of time.
' It must have been run up since I was here last,'
says Jack to himself, 'though that's queer, for I

90 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
reckon it'd take years to rig up a dandy show of this
sort.' But in he went.
" He was surprised, when he got in, and so would
you have been. It was like the place I saw on the
stage at London once. It was in Aladdin, at a place
in the Mile End Road. You know what those
things are like, when the curtain goes up. You can
see a long way, but you can't see all the way. You
expect something to happen there. It was full of
pillars, all white and gold, in a pink light. There
was a lot of ladies and gentlemen sitting on sofas
full of cushions, talking, and they were too grand to
even notice Jack as he stood there looking round for
a chair. But it took a lot to get on Jack's nerves.
There was one girl in a white silk dress, with red
roses in her golden belt, and she had a white hat
with red roses in that, and she looked like a summer
day. Jack was glad to see that the only vacant
chair was at a table where she sat alone. Of course,
over there goes Jack. The place was as quiet as a
church before the service begins. There was only
a faint whispering. He got to where the girl sat,
as if she was waiting for him. She looked up and
smiled at Jack. Jack sat down beside her and said
what a fine day it was. She had a face the colour
of moonlight, and her eyes were odd. But there
wasn't a girl who could make Jack wonder if his
tie was straight, in those days, and he began to
order things, and talk.
" Once he took a look round, leaning back in his
chair, feeling pretty large, and he noticed the other
people were looking at him artful-like, out of the
corners of their eyes, as if he was talking too loud.

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 91
But Jack thought he'd jolly well talk as he liked,
and he'd got just the best girl in that room or any
where else. He looked at his watch. It was near
twelve o'clock. He had to be at his owner's by one.
There was plenty of time.
" The drink had a funny taste, but it was the best
liquor he'd ever had. He marked down that place.
He didn't know there was a show like that in Cardiff.
He caught hold of the girl's hand, which he noticed
was white, and very cold, and pretended he wanted
to look at her ring; There was a stone in the ring,
just like a bit of soda. She asked him to try it on
his own finger, because the stone changed colour
then, but Jack couldn't get the ring off till he'd
placed her finger to his lips, to moisten the ring. He
was the boy, was Jack, to see things didn't drag
along. When he got the ring on his finger the stone
was full of red fire. So the time went ; but he forgot
all about time, and the owner, and the owner's
daughter, and everything. The girl's hair was
scented, too, and it was close to him.
" Presently he looked up, and saw what he'd never
noticed before. He could see further into the build
ing than ever. There seemed to be a garden beyond,
full of sunshine, and all the men and women were
walking that way, talking loud, and laughing. His
own girl got up too, and said, ' Come along, Jack
Driscoll,' and he never even wondered how she knew
his name, nor why her face was like snow by moon
light, nor why she smiled hke that.
" No. Not Jack. All he thought was what a
ripping garden that was, with palms, and marble
courts, hke you see in the East. There was music

92 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
far away, two notes and a drum, like you hear in a
native dance, before the dancers come. It made
Jack feel fike a milhonaire or a lord, able to do any
thing, but just then only wanting a good time.
Then he noticed they were alone in the garden,
which was full of trees in blossom. All the other
people had gone. There was only that music. The
place was very quiet. He could hear water tinkling
in a fountain, and he reckoned he would stay there
till closing time. The girl talked to him in whispers,
and he put his arm round her. I don't know how
long he stayed there, but he kept telling the girl she
was the best girl he'd ever had, and he'd never had
such a good time in his fife.
" It was funny the way he got out. Jack reckoned
in there that the world would never come to an end,
like young fellers do, when you're enjoying them'
selves proper. But once he took her ring off his
finger, to have another look at it. Then he was in
the street again, looking up at a building which had
its door shut, and Jack only thought he was looking
there for a number he wanted.
" It had started to rain. He looked at his watch.
It was just twelve o'clock. He didn't know what
he wanted with an address in that street, so he
started off in a hurry for his owner's house, feeling
pretty stiff, as if he'd been sleeping rough. When
he got to his owner's house, he rang the bell.
" The owner's daughter came to the door, and
looked at him like she didn't know him, and was a
bit afraid of him. ' No thank you,' she said kindly,
' not to-day.' And shut the door at once.
" What puzzled Jack was that he didn't feel

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 93
surprised and angry. He turned and went down
those steps again, and down the street, thinking it
over. He looked back at the house. Yes, that was
the house all right. And that was Annie all right.
Well, what the devil was the matter with him ?
There was a public-house at the corner, and he
stopped there, thinking things over, and staring at
the window. Then he saw his face in a mirror,
and shouted so that the barman came and ordered
him out of that, sharp now. But he kept looking
at the glass, not believing bis eyes. He knew his
own face again, but only just knew it. His eyes
were dull and red and gummy, same as those old
men have who've lived too long, and his face was
puffed and pimpled, and he had a lousy white beard."

II

December 28. Lat. 39.10 N., long. 16.3 W. Course,
S.W. J west. We are nearing the tropics. Now
the ship has such a complete set of grumblers, good
fellows who know their work better than anyone
less than God, that our great distance at sea is plain.
Our men, casually gathered and speaking divers
tongues, detached from earth and set afloat on a
mobile islet to mix on it if they can, have become
one body to deal with the common enemy. We are
corporate to face each trouble as it meets us, and
free to explain afterwards how much better we
should have done under another captain. The
skipper knows this broad spirit now possesses us,
and so is contented and blithe, wearing only on deck
that weary look which is the sober badge of high
office, as though he were an unfortunate man to
have us about him, we being what we are, but that
he would do his best with the fools, seeing we are
in his charge.
This morning at six, hearing the men at the hose
pipes giving the decks their daily wash, I tumbled
out for a cold tub. This is a simple affair. You
leave the cabin with a towel about you, stand in a
clear space, and rotate before the hydrant, to general
cheering. A hot bath on the " Capella " is not so
easy, because, although there is a bath-room aboard,
it has become a paint locker. One must descend

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 95
into the engine-room, after warning the engineer on
duty, who then will have ready a barrel, filled from
the boilers. The ingenious man will fix a shower
bath also. This is a perforated meat tin, hanging
from a grating above the tub, and connected with a
pump. After a hot bath in the engine-room, where
the temperature was often well over 120°, that
shower of cold sea water would strike loud cries
from any man whose self-control was uncertain.
This morning was the right prelude to the tropics.
This was the morning when, if our planet had been
till then untenanted, a world unconsummated and
waiting approval, the divine approval would have
come, and a child would have been born, an immortal,
the offspring of Aurora and the Sea God, flame-
haired and lusty, with eyes as bright as joy, and a
rosy body to be kissed from toes to crown. The
dancing light, and the warm shower suddenly born
alive in it from one ripe cloud, the golden air, the
waves of the north-east trades, the seas of the world
in the first dawn, moving along fike a multitude
released to play, their blue passionate and profound,
their crests innocent and dazzling, made me think
I might hear faint cheering, if I listened intently.
In the west was a steep range of cloudland rising
from the sea, and against it was inclined the flame
of a rainbow. There was that rainbow, as constant
as the pennant hoisted over an uplighted occasion.
The world's noble emblem was aloft. I demanded
of the Skipper if he would run up our ensign in reply
to it ; but he only peered at me curiously.
The heat increased with the day. We had run
well down from the bleak apex of the world with its

96 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
nimbus of fogs. Here was the entrance to the place
where our youthful dreams began. I recognised it.
Every feature was as we both have seen it from afar,
across the roofs from our outlook in the arid city
when the path to it had appeared as hopeless to our
feet as the path to the moon. This pioneer can assure
his fellows whose bright illusions grow fainter with
age that their dreams must be followed up, to be
reached. At midday we began to cast clothes. As to the
afternoon, of that I remember the less. There was
the chief's empty bunk, so much more alluring than
my own. Into that I climbed, my mind steeled
against drowsy weakness. I would digest my dinner
with a book, eyes sternly alert.
The " Capella " rocked slowly, a big cradle. My
body was lax and responsive. There was about us
the silent emptiness which is far from the centres
where many men believe it is necessary to get lots
of things done. The Chief suspired on his settee.
The waves were singing to themselves. A ray of
light laughed in my eyes, playing hide and seek
across the wisdom of my book. ... I put the book
down. As you know, where I had come from we do not
dare to sleep during daylight without first arguing
with the conscience, which usually we fail to convince.
This comes of our mental trick which takes a pleasure
we wholly desire and puts on it a prohibitive label.
Self-indulgence, you understand ; softening of the
character ; courage, brothers, do not stumble. The
solemn forefinger wags gravely in our faces. Before
I fell asleep, my habit, born of the hard grey weather

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 97
which makes an Englishman hard and prosperous, did
come with its admonitory forefinger. Remember
ing that I was secure in a sunnier world I cried out
with ribald mockery across the abyss I had safely
crossed, knowing my old self could not follow, and
shut my eyes happily. And also, let me say — sitting
up again with an urgelyt afterthought, which I must
get rid of before I sleep — if this were not a plain
narrative of travel without any wise asides I would
get off the " Capella " here to argue that what all
you fellows want in the place I have luckily left is
not more self-restraint, in which wan virtue you have
long shown yourselves to be so proficient that our
awards for your merit have overcrowded the work
houses, but more rollicking self-indulgence and a
ruddy and bright eyed insistence on the means to it.
Look at me now in this bunk ! Not since I was
last in a cradle have I felt the world would buoy me
up if I dared to shut my eyes to affairs while the sun
was shining. But I am going to try it again now,
and risk my future. I repeat, I would argue this
with you, only I want to sleep. . . .
It is worth recording that when I woke I found
nothing had happened to me, except benefit. The
venture can be made safely. Others had kept the
course for me. The ship had not stopped. Through
the door I could see a half-naked, blackened, and
sweating stoker, who had been keeping the fires
while I slept, and he was getting back his breath
in loud sobs. Something had made him sick. These
stupid and dirty men will drink too much while they
are attending to the furnaces. They have been
warned of the danger, of which they take no heed,

98 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
and so they have to suffer. On the poop was the
second officer, busy in the hot sun with a gang, over
hauling a boat. And I found, on enquiry, that a
man was still at the wheel. So thereafter, while in
the land of the constant sun, I slept every afternooil,
and was never a penny the worse. Somehow, you
know, things went on. I think I shall become one
of the intelligent leisured class.
It was within an hour of midnight. The moon
had set. I was idling amidships about the ship's
shadowy structure when I was asked to take charge
of the bridge till eight bells. The second mate was
ill, and the first mate was asleep through overwork.
The skipper said he would not keep me up there
long. I had but to call if a light came into view,
and to keep an eye on the wheelhouse. Ah, but it
is long since I played at ships, and was a pirate
captain. I remembered there are dull folk who
wonder what it feels like to be a king. The king
does not know. Ask the small boy who is surprised
with an order to hold a horse's head. I took my
promotion, mounting the steep ladder to the open
height in the night.
I felt then I was more than sundered from my
kind. I had been taken and placed remotely from
the comfort of the " Capella's " isolated community
also. There was me, and there were the stars. They
were my nearest neighbours. I stood for you among
them alone. When the last man hears but does not
see the deep waters of this dark sphere in that night
to which there shall be no morning sun, he shall
know what was my sensation aloft in the saddle
of the " Capella " ; the only inhabitant of a con-

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 99
gealed asteroid off the main track in space, with the
sun diminished to a point through travel, and the
Milky Way not reached yet ; though I could see we
were approaching its bay of light. An appreciable
journey had been made. But by the faintness of its
shine there was a timeless vacancy to be travelled
still. We should make that faint glow, that con
gregation of suns, that archipelago of worlds ; though
not yet. But had we not all the night to travel in ?
The night would be long. We should not be dis
rupted any more by the old day. The final morning
had passed. I had no doubt the drift of the dark
lump to which I clung in space, while my hair
streamed with our speed, would at length reach the
bright fraternity, no more than a dimmer of removed
promise though it seemed.
A bell rang beside me in the night. It was
answered at once from somewhere ahead. Others,
then, were journeying with me. The void was
peopled, though the travellers were all invisible;
and I heard a confident voice call, "Lights are
burning bright." The fights were. I could see that.
But when the profundities are about you, and you
think you are alone in outer night, that is the kind
of word to hear. Joyously I shouted into what
seemed to be boundless nothing, " All Right ! "
. • ¦ • •
One dayfall we saw the Canary Islands a great
distance on the port beam. I do not know which
day it was. The Hesperides were as blurred as the
place in the calendar. The days had run together
into a measureless sense of well-being. We had
passed the last of the trivial allotments of time.

100 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
The islands loomed, and I wondered whether that
land was the hint of something in a past life which
the memory saw but could not shape. Whatever
was there it was too long forgotten. That apparition
which a whisper told me was land faded as I gazed
at it overseas, lazily trying to remember what it
once meant. It was gone again. It was no matter
now. Perhaps I was deceiving myself. Perhaps I
had had no other life. This " Capella," always
under the height of a blue dome, always the centre
of a circular floor of waters, waters to be seen beat
ing against the steep and luminous walls encom
passing us, though nowhere finding an outlet, was
all my experience. I could recall only the faintest
shadows of a past into that limpid present. I could
see nothing clearly that was not confined within the
dark faultless hne where the sky was inseparably
annealed to the sea. Here I had been always. All
I knew was this length of sheltered deck, and those
doors behind me where I leaned on a rail between
the stanchions, doors which sheltered a few familiars
with their clothes on hooks, their pipe racks, and
photographs of women, a length of deck finishing
on either hand in two iron ladders, the ladder for
ward, just past the radiation and coal grit by the
engine-room casing, descending to a broad walk
which led to the forecastle head, that bare outlook
always at a difference with the horizon ; and the
ladder aft going down to another broad walk, sticky
with new tar, where the bulwarks were as high as
the breast, and Tinker the dog, glad of a word from
you, trotted about the rusty winches and around
the hatches ; and that walk aft finished in the door

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 101
of the alley-way opening upon the asylum of the
doctor's cabin, and the saloon, the skipper's sanctum,
and the domain of the friendly steward. There was
the smell of the cargo drawing from the ventilators
on the deck, when you went by their trumpet mouths.
There was the warm oily gush of air from the engine-
room entrance. And in the saloon alley-way I used
to think the store of potatoes, right behind, was
generating gases. (But nobody knows every origin
of the marine smells.) Well, here were all the things
my senses apprehended. I could walk round my
universe in five minutes. And when I had finished I
cbuld do it again. Here I had been always. Nothing
could be clearer than that. Looking out from my
immediate circumstances I saw no entrance to the
place where we were rocking, the place where the
" Capella " was alone. The walls of the enclosure
were flawless. There was not a door through them
anywhere. There was not a rift in the precision of
the dark circle about us where one could crawl out
between the sky and the sea.
There we indubitably were though, and I dwelt
constantly on the miracle of that lucky existence.
I could not doubt that we were there. Yet how had
we got there ? I leave that to the metaphysicians.
There we were ; and no man who merely trusted his
experience could explain our presence. There was
some evidence to my simple mind that such a life
in such surroundings perchance was the gift of the
gods, and that we could never get any nearer the
limits of the world in which we had been placed
to see what was beyond, could never approach that
enclosure of blue walls where the distant waves,

102 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
which beat against them, could not get out. Morning
after morning I watched them, the dark leaping
shapes of the far rebels, mounting their prison at its
base, and collapsing, beaten.
The seas never changed. They followed us and
the wind, a living host, the blue of their slopes and
hollows as deep as ecstasy, their crests white and
lambent. They were buoyant, they were leisurely,
they were the right companions of travel. They
just kept pace with us. They ran after us like happy
children, as though they had been lagging. They
came a-beam to turn up to us their shining faces,
calling to us musically, then dropping behind again
in silence. When I looked overside into the pellucid
depths, peering below the surface in long forgetful-
ness, leaving the body and gliding the mind in that
palpable and hyacinthine air beneath us where
the sunken foam dimmered in pale clouds, I felt
myself not afloat but hovering in the midst of
a hollow sphere filled with light. The blue water
was only a heavier and a darker air. I had no
weight there. I was only a quiet thought tinctured
with the royal colour of the space wherein I
drifted. The upper half of the sphere was blue also, but of
a different blue. The rarer and more volatile ether
was above us. The sea was its essence and precipitate.
The sea colour was profound and satisfying ; but
the colour of the sky was diffused, as though the
heaven were an idea which was beyond you, which
you stood regarding, and azure were its symbol, and
that by concentration you might fathom its meaning.
But I can report no luck from my concentrated

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 103
efforts on that symbol. The colour may have been
its own reward.
• •••¦«
Every morning after breakfast the Skipper and the
Doctor made a visit to the forecastle. Then, after
the Doctor had carefully searched his dress for
insects, we spent the day together. We mounted
the forecastle to begin with, watching the acre of
dazzling foam which the " Capella's " bows broke
around us. Out of that the flying fish would get up,
just under us, to go skimming off, flights of silver
locusts. This reminded the surgeon that we might
try for albacore and bonito, which would be a change
from tinned mutton. The Skipper found a long fir
pole, to which was attached sixty fathoms of line,
with a large hook which we covered with a white
rag, lapping a cutting of tin round the shank. When
this object was dropped over the stern in its leaps
from wave to wave it bore a distant resemblance to
a flying fish. The weight of the trailing line, break
ing a cord " tell-tale," frequently gave us false alarms
and long tiring hauls. But on the second day the
scaffold pole vibrated to some purpose, and we knew
we were hauling in more than the bait. We got
aboard a coryphene, the dolphin of the sailors. It
gave us in its death agony the famous display,
beautiful, but rather painful to watch, for the wonder
ful hues, as they changed, stayed in the eye, and sent
to the mind only a message of a creature in a violent
death struggle.
The contours of this predatory fish express extra
ordinary speed and power, and its armed mouth
has been upturned by Providence the better to

104 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
catch the flying fish as they drop back to sea after
an effort to escape from it. But Providence, or
evolution, had never taught the coryphene that there
are times when the httle flying fish, as it falls back
exhausted, may be a rag of white shirt and a scrap
of bright tin ware with a large hook in its deceptive
little belly. So there the dolphin was, glowing and
fading with the hues of faery. Its life really illumin
ating it from within. As its life ebbed, or strove
convulsively, its colours Waned and pulsed. It was
gold when it came on board, and darkened to ultra
marine as it thrashed the deck, and its broad dorsal
fin showed violet eyes. Its body changed to a pale
metallic green ; and then its light went out.
Now as I look back upon the " Capella " and her
company as they were in that period of our adventure
when our place was but somewhere in mid-ocean
between Senegambia and Trinidad, I see us but
indifferently, for we are mellowed in that haze in
which retrospection just discerns those affairs, long
since accomplished, that were not altogether weari
some. It is better to go to my log again, for there
the matter was noted by the stub of a pencil at
the very time, and when, unless a beautiful mist
was seen, it had not the remotest chance of being
recorded. When I turn to the diary for further
evidence of those days of blue and gold in the north
east trades its faithfulness is seen at once.
" 30 Deer. A grey day. The sun fitful. Wind
and seas on the port quarter, and the large following
billows occasionally lopping inboard as she rolled.
The decks therefore are sloppy again. We had
a sharp reminder at six bells that we are not bound

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 105
to any health resort, as Sandy put it. We were
told to go aft, where the doctor would give each of
us five grains of quinine. This is to be a daily rite.
To encourage the men to take the quinine it is to be
given to them in gin. Being foreigners, they did
not understand the advice about the quinine, but
they caught the word gin quite well, and they were
outside the saloon alley-way, a smiling queue, at the
stroke of eleven. I went along to see the harsh
truth dawn on them. The first man was a big
German deckhand. He took the glass from the
doctor. His shy and puzzled smile at this unexpected
charity from the skipper dissolved instantly when
the quinine got behind it. His eyes opened and
stared at nothing. To the surprise of his fellows
he turned violently to the ship's side, rested his
hands on it, and spat ; spat carefully, continuously,
and with grave deliberation.
" Distance run since noon yesterday 230 miles.
Actual knots 9.5. Total distance 2072 miles. There
was not a living thing in sight to-day ; not even a
flying fish.
" The night is fine and starlit, the Milky Way a
brilliant arch from east to west, under which we
are steaming. When Venus rose she was a tiny
moon, so refulgent that she gave a faint pallor to a
large area of sky, outlined the coast of a cloud, and
made a broad shining path on the sea. The moon
rose after nine, veiled in filmy air, peeping motion
less at the edge of a black curtain.
" The moon later was quite obscured, and the
steamer ceased to exist except where in my heated
cabin the smoky oil lamp showed me my dismal

106 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
cubicle. I went in and sat on the mate's sea chest.
The mate was on duty. On the washstand was
his mug of cocoa, and on top of the mug two thick
sandwiches of bread and meat. That food was black
with cockroaches. The oil lamp stank but gave httle
light. The engines were throbbing, and out of the
open door I saw the gleam of the wash, and heard its
harassing note. I could not read. I loathed the
idea of getting into the hot bunk and lying there,
stewing, a clear keen clangour of thoughts making
sleep impossible. The mate appeared, drove off
the cockroaches cheerfully, examined the sandwiches
for inconspicuous deer, opening each to make sure,
and then muffled himself with one. My God ! I
could have killed him with these two hands. What
right had he to be cheerful ? But he is such a ginger-
headed boy, and to break that unconsciously happy
smile of his would be sacrilege. Besides, he began
to tell me about his sweetheart. Her portrait hangs
in our cabin. It is an enlargement. You pay for
the frame, and the photographer, overjoyed I sup
pose, gives you the enlargement. I prefer the
second engineer's sweethearts, who are in colours,
and are Dutch picture postcards and cuttings from
French comic papers ; and he calls them his recol
lections of Sundays at home. I listened, patient
and kind, to the second mate's reminiscences of
rapturous evening walks under the lamps of Swansea
with this girl in the picture — no doubt it eased his
heart to tell me — till I could have howled aloud,
like the dog who hears music at night. Then I
broke away, and ran to the chief's cabin for
sanctuary.

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 107
" The Chief was making an abstract, and was
searching through his log for ten tons of coal which
were missing. In the hunt for the lost coal I lost
myself. I grew excited wherever a thick bush of
figures promised the hidden quarry ; and in an
hour's search found the strayed tons in hiding at
the bottom of a column. They had been left there,
and not transported into the next. Again the dread
of that bunk had to be faced and dealt with. I
stood at the chief's door, knocking out my pipe,
looking astern into the night, looking to where Ursa-
Major, our celestial familiar of home, was low down
and preparing to leave us altogether to the strange
and perhaps unlucky gods of other skies. O the
nights at sea !
" 31 Deer. Wakened with my heart jumping
because of a devastating sound without. In the
early morning, Tinker was being thrashed by the
Old Man for eating the saloon mats. When at 11.30
the men congregated amidships with their tins for
dinner the sun was a near furnace and the breeze
a balm. The white of the ship is now a glare, and
the sea foam cannot be looked at. Donkey lumbered
out of his place where he attends to the minor boiler,
his face the colour of putty, and held to a rail, gazing
out with dead eyes overside, gasping. He declared
he couldn't stick his job. The flying fish are getting
up in flights all day long. I saw one fish go a distance
of about fifty yards in a semi-circle, making a bight
in the direction of the wind. We caught another
large coryphene to-day, and had him in steaks for
tea. He was much better cooked than the last,
which had the texture of white wool; and to

108 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
increase our happiness the cook had not given us
sour bread. At midday we were 17.22 N. and
33.27 W.
" I had a lonely evening with the chief. This is
New Year's eve. We talked of the East India Dock
Road, and of much else in London Town. At eight
bells, when we held up our glasses in the direction of
Polaris, the moon was bright and the waters hushed.
Then we took each a hurricane lamp, and went
about the decks collecting flying fish for breakfast,
finding a dozen of them.
" 1 Jan. The uphfted splendour of these days
persists ; but the splendour sags now a little at
midday with the weight of the heat. The poop
deck is now sheltered with an awning; and lying
there in lazy chairs, with a wind following and barely
overtaking us, idly watching the shadows of the
overhead gear move on the bright awning as the
ship rolls, is to get caught in the toils of the droning
wake, and to sleep before you know you are a prisoner.
The wake itself, in these seas, when the sun is on it,
a broad road going home straight and white over
the hills, the road which is not for us, is one of the
good things of the voyage. Straight beneath the
rail the wake is an upheaval of gems, sapphires,
emeralds, and diamonds, always instantly melting
in the sun, always fusing and fleeting in swift coils
of malachite and chrysoprase, but never gone. As
you watch that coloured turmoil it draws your mind
from your body. You feel your careless gaze snatched
in the revolving hues speeding astern, and your con
sciousness is instantly unwound from your spinning

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 109
brain, and you are left standing on she ship, an
empty spool.
" Under the awning at night, to the Doctor and
to me, the first mate played his accordion. He is a
httle Welshman, this mate, with a childish nose and
a brutish moustache, and in his face is blended a
girlish innocence of large affairs, and the hirsute
nature of the adult male animal, a nature he relieves
on the " Capella " with bawdy talk and guffaws.
He played ' Come, Birdie, Come,' and things like
that, and then told us some Monte Videan stories. As
they were true stories about himself and other young
sailors they ought really to be included in a faithful
diary of a sea voyage, yet as I cannot reproduce
the Doctor's antiseptic judgment, of which I know
nothing but the glow of his pipe in the unresponding
dark at the end of the stories — the last titter of the
mate had died away — it is better to leave this matter
alone. " 3 Jan. The hottest day we have had. I
descended at midday to the engines to see Sandy
at work with his shining giants. Standing on the
middle platform, while he was shouting his greetings
to me over the uproar, I felt the heat of the grating
through my boot soles, and shifted. The tempera
ture there was 122°. Sandy was but in his drawers
and a air of old boots, and the tongues of the boots,
properly, were hanging out. His noble torso was
glistening with moisture, and as I talked, energetic
ally vaulting my words above the roar of the crank
throws in that hot and oleaginous place, the perspira
tion began a sudden drop from my own face and
hands, and in a copious way which startled me. For

110 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
a time I had some difficulty in breathing, as though
in a vacuum, but gradually forgot this danger of
suffocation in the love of the artist Sandy showed
while offering me the spectacle of ' his job.' I think
I understood him. At first one would see no order
in that haze of rioting steel. The massive metal
waves of the shaft were walloping and plunging in
their pits with an astonishing bird-like alacrity;
about fifteen tons of polished steel were moving with
swift and somewhat awful desperation. The big
room shook and hummed with the vigour of it. But
order came as Sandy talked, and presently I found
the continuous thunder, that deadening bass of the
crank throws,- seemed to lessen as we conversed,
sitting together on a tool chest. Our voices easily
penetrated it. And listening more attentively at
length I found what Sandy said was true, that each
tossing and circling part of the room-full could be
heard contributing its strident or profound note to
the chorus, and each became constant and expected,
a singing personality which was heard through the
others whenever listened for. Above all, at regular
intervals, a rod rang clear, like the bell in Parsifal;
yet, curiously enough, Sandy declared he could not
catch that note, though it tolled clear and resonant
enough in my ears. The skylight was so far above
us that we got little daylight. Hanging from the
gratings in a few places, some black iron pots, shaped
like kettles, had cotton rags in their spouts, and
were giving us oil flares instead. The terrific un
remitting energy of the ponderous arms, moving
thunderously, and still with a speed which made
tons as aery as flashes of light; and Sandy in the

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 111
midst of it, quick in nothing but his eyes, moving
about his raging but tethered monsters cock-sure
and casual, rubbing his hands on a pull < of cotton
waste, putting his ear down to hsten attentively at
a bearing, his face turned from a steel fist which
flung violently at his head, missed him, and with
drew to shoot at him again, gave me the first distinct
feeling that our enterprise had its purpose powerfully
energised and cunningly directed. I felt as I watched
the dance of the eccentrics and the connecting rods
that our ship was getting along famously. I think
I detected in Sandy himself a faint contempt for the
chap at the upper end of the telegraph. I stayed
two hours, and then my shirt was as though I had
been overboard ; and ascending a greasy and almost
perpendicular series of ladders to the upper world,
I discovered, from the drag of my feet and the weight
of my body, that I had had just as much of an
engineer's watch in ths tropics as I could stand.
There was a burst of cool light. The tumult ceased ;
and again there was the old " Capella " rocking in
the singing seas, for ever under the tranquil clouds.
We had stopped again.
" 4 Jan. A moderate north-east wind and sea,
and a bright morning ; but far out a dark cloud
formed, and grew, and driving towards us, covered
us presently with a blue-black canopy. The warm
torrent fell with outrageous violence, and for all we
could see of our way the ' Capella ' might have
been in a dense fog. The mosquito curtains were
served out to-day, and we amused ourselves draping
our bunks. Later, the weather cleared. The night
was stiflingly hot ; and in that reeking bunk, with

112 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
an iron bulkhead separating me from the engine room,
it was hke lying on the shelf of an oven. Though
wide open on its catch, the door admitted no air,
but did allow a miserable tap-tapping as the ship
rolled. At eleven o'clock a pale face floated in the
black vacancy of the door, and I could see the
Doctor peering in to find if I were awake. ' I say,
Purser, I can't sleep. Will you come and have a
gossip, old dear ? ' We went aft in our pyjamas,
the Doctor cleared away bottles and things from
his settee, and we disembarked from the ' Capella,'
visiting other and distant stars, returning to our own
again not before three next morning.
" 5 Jan. We seem to have got to a dead end of
the trade winds. The heat of the forenoon was
oppressively humid and dinner was nearly lost
through it. The cook, a fair and plump Dutchman,
broke down in the midst of his pans, and was carried
out to find his breath again. This poor chef is up at
four o'clock every morning coffee making ; is work
ing in the galley, which is badly ventilated, all day,
getting two hours rest in the early afternoon. Then
he goes on till the saloon tea is over ; when he begins
to bake bread. He fills in his leisure in peeling
potatoes. " All round the horizon motionless and permanent
storm clouds are banked. Their forms do not alter,
but their colours change with the hours. They
seem to encompass us in a circular lake, a range of
precipitous and intricately piled Alps, high and
massive. Cleaving those steeps of calamitous rock—
for so they looked, and not in the least like vapour-
are chasms full of night, and the upper slopes and

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 113
summits are lucent in amber and pearl. In the
south and east the ranges are indigo dark and threaten
ing, and the water between us and that closed country
is opaque and heavy as molten lead. Across the
peaks of the mountains rest horizontal strata of
mist. Some petrels were about to-day. The
evening is cool, with a slight head breeze."
After weeks at sea, imprisoned within the walls
of the sky, walls which have not opened once to
admit another vessel to give the assurance of com
munion, you begin to doubt your direction and
destination, and the possibihty of change. Only
the clouds change. The ship is no nearer breaking
that rigid circle. She cannot escape from her place
under the centre of the dome. The most cheering
assurance I had was the pulse of the steamer, felt
whenever I rested against her warm body. Pur
poseful life was there, at least. Though the day
may have been brazen, and without a hint of progress,
and the sea the same empty wilderness, yet when
most disheartened in the bhnd and melancholy night
I felt under me the beatings, energetic and insistent,
of her lively heart, some of that vitality was com
municated, and I got sleep as a child would in the
arms of a strong and wakeful guardian.
Poised between two profundities — though nearer
the clouds, cirrus and lofty though they are, than
the land straight beneath the keel — and with morn
ing and night the only variety in the round, the days
flicker by white and black like a magic lantern
working without a story. Tired of watching for
the fruits of our enterprise I went to sleep. Old

114 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
Captain Morgan must have hved a dull hfe, mono
tonous with adventure. What is the use of travel, I
asked myself. The stars are as near to London as they
are to the Spanish main. In their planetary journey
through the void the passengers at Peckham see as
much as their fellows who peer through the windows
in Macassar. The sun rises in the east, and the
moon is horned ; but some of the passengers on the
mudball, strangely enough, take their tea without
milk. Yet what of that ?
In the chart room some days ago I learned we
had 3000 fathoms under us. Well ; these waves
of the tropics, curling over such abysmal deeps,
look much the same as the waves off Land's End.
I began to see what I had done. I had changed
the murk of winter in London for the discomforts
of the dog days. I had come thousands of miles to
see the thermometer rise. Where are the Spanish
Main, the Guianas, and the Brazils ? At last I had
discovered them. I found their true bearings.
They are in Raleigh's " Golden City of Manoa," in
Burney's " Buccaneers of America," with Drake,
Humboldt, Bates, and Wallace; and I had left
them all at home. We borrow the light of an
observant and imaginative traveller, and see the
foreign land bright with his aura ; and we think it
is the country which shines.
• •••••
At eight this morning we crossed the equator.
I paid my footing in whisky, and forgot all about
the equator. Soon after that, idling under the poop
awning, I picked up the Doctor's book from his
vacant chair. I took the essays of Emerson care-

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 115
lessly and read at once — the sage plainly had laid a
trap for me — " Why covet a knowledge of new facts ?
Day and night, a house and garden, a few books, a
few actions, serve as well as all trades and spectacles."
So  . At this moment the first mate crossed
my light, and presently I heard the sounding machine
whirring, and then stop. There was a pause, and
then the mate's unimportant voice, " Twenty-five
fathoms, sir, grey sand ! "
Emerson went sprawling. I stood up. Twenty-
five fathoms ! Then that grey sand stuck to the
tallow of the weight was the first of the Brazils.
The circle of waters was still complete about us,
but over the bows, at a great distance, were
thunder clouds and wild fights. The oceanic
swell had decreased to a languid and glassy beat,
and the water had become jade green in colour,
shot with turquoise gleams. The Skipper, himself
interested and almost jolly, announced a pound of
tobacco to the first man who spied the coast. We
were nearing it at last. Those far clouds canopied
the forests of the Amazon. We stood in at slow
speed. I know those forests. I mean I have often navi
gated their obscure waterways, rafting through the
wilds on a map, in my shppers, at night. Now those
forests soon were to loom on a veritable skyline.
I should see them where they stood, their roots in
the unfrequented floods. I should see Santa Maria
de Belem, its aerial foliag0 over its shipping and
squalor. It was quite near now. I should see
Santarem and Obydos, and Ita-coatiara ; and then,
turning from the King of Rivers to his tributary,

116 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
the Madeira, follow the Madeira to the San Antonio
falls in the heart of the South American continent.
We drew over 23 feet, with this "Capella." We
were going to try what had never been attempted
before by an ocean steamer. This, too, was pioneer
ing. I also was on an adventure, going two thousand
miles under those clouds of the equatorial rains,
to live for a while in the forests of the Orellana.
And our vessel's rigging, so they tell me, some
times shall drag the foliage in showers on our decks,
and where we anchor at night the creatures of the
jungle will call.
Our nearness to land stirs up some old dreads in
our minds also. We discuss those dreads again,
though with more concern than we did at Swansea.
Over the bows is now the prelude. We have heard
many unsettling legends of yellow fever, malaria,
blackwater fever, dysentery, and beri-beri. The
mates, looking for land, swear they were foojs to
come a voyage like this. They ought to have known
better. The Doctor, who does not always smile
when he is amused, advises us not to buy a white
sun umbrella at Para, but a black one ; then it will
do for the funerals.
" Land 0 ! " That was the Skipper's own per
functory cry. He had saved his pound of tobacco.
It was two in the afternoon. There was America.
I rediscovered it with some difficulty. All I could
see was a mere local thickening of the horizon, as
though the pen which drew the faint line dividing
the world ahead into an upper and a nether opal
escence had run a httle freely at one point. That
thickening of the horizon was the island of Monjui.

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 117
Soon, though, there was a palpable something athwart
our course. The skyline heightened into a bluish
barrier, which, as we approached still nearer, broke
into sections. The chart showed that a series of
low wooded islands skirted the mainland. Yet it was
hard to believe we were approaching land again.
What showed as land was of too unsubstantial a
quality, too thin and broken a rind on that vast
area of water to be of any use as a foothold. Where
luminous sky was behind an island groups of diminutive
palms showed, as tiny and distinct as the forms of
mildew under a magnifying glass, delicate black
pencillings along the foot of the skywall. Often that
hairlike tracery seemed to rest upon the sea. The
" Capella " continued to stand in, till America was
more than a frail and tinted illusion which some
times faded the more the eye sought it. Presently
it cast reflections. The islands grew into cobalt
layers, with vistas of silver water between them,
giving them body. The course was changed to
west, and we cruised along for Atalaia point, to
wards the pilot station. Over the thin and futile
rind of land which topped the sea — it might have
undulated on the low swell — ponderous thunder
clouds towered, continents of night in the sky, with
translucent areas dividing them which were strangely
illuminated from the hither side. Curtains as black as
bitumen draped to the waters from great heights. Two
of these appalling curtains, trailing over America,
were a little withdrawn. We could look beyond them
to a diminishing array of glowing cloud summits,
as if we saw there an accidental revelation of a
secret and wonderful region with a sun of its own.

118 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
And all, gigantic clouds, the sea, the far and frail
coast, were serene and still. The air had ceased
to breathe. I thought this new lucent world we
had found might prove but a lucky dream after all,
to be seen but not to be entered, and that some noise
would presently shatter it and wake me. But we
came alongside the white pilot schooner, and the pilot
put off in a boat manned by such a crowd of grinning,
ragged, and cinnamon skinned pirates as would
have broken the fragile wonder of any spell. Ours,
though, did not break, and I was able to believe We
had arrived. At sunset the great clouds were full of
explosions of electric fire, and there were momentary
revelations above us of huge impending shapes.
We went slowly over a lower world obscurely lighted
by phosphorescent waves.
• •••••
It was not easy to make out, before sunrise, what
it was we had come to. I saw a phantom and
indeterminate country ; but as though we guessed
it was suspicious and observant, and its stillness a
device, we moved forward slowly and noiselessly, as
a thief at an entrance. Low level cliffs were near
to either beam. The cliffs might have been the
dense residuum of the night. The night had been
precipitated from the sky, which was clearing and
brightening. Our steamer was between banks of
these iron shades.
Suddenly the sunrise ran a long band of glowing
saffron over the shadow to port, and the vague summit
became remarkable with a parapet of black filigree,
crowns and fronds of palms and strange trees show
ing in rigid patterns of ebony. A faint air then

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 119
moved from off shore as though under the impulse
of the pouring light. It was heated and humid, and
bore a curious odour, at once foreign and familiar,
the smell of damp earth, but not of the earth I knew,
and of vegetation, but of vegetation exotic and
wild. For a time it puzzled me that I knew the
smell ; and then I remembered where we had met
before. It was in the palm house at Kew Gardens.
At Kew that odour once made a deeper impression
on me than the extraordinary vegetation itself, for
as a boy I thought that I inhaled the very spirit of
the tropics of which it was born. After the first minute
on the Para river that smell went, and I never noticed
it again.
Full day came quickly to show me the reality of
one of my early visions, and I suppose I may not
expect many more such minutes as I spent when
watching from the " Capella's " bridge the forest
of the Amazon take shape. It was soon over. The
morning light brimmed at the forest top, and spilled
into the river. The channel filled with sunshine.
There it was then. In the northern cliff I could see
even the boughs and trunks ; they were veins of
silver in a mass of sohd chrysolite. This forest had
not the rounded and dull verdure of our own woods
in midsummer, with deep bays of shadow. It was
a sheer front, uniform, shadowless, and astonishingly
vivid. I thought then the appearance of the forest
was but a local feature, and so gazed at it for what
it would show me next. It had nothing else to
show me. Clumps of palms threw their fronds
above the forest roof in some places, or a giant
exogen raised a dome ; but that was all. Those

120 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
strong characters in the growth were seen only ih
passing. They did not change the outlook ahead
of converging lines of level green heights rising
directly from a brownish flood.
Occasionally the river narrowed, or we passed
close to one wall, and then we could see the texture
of the forest surface, the microstructure of the cliff,
though we could never look into it for more than a
few yards, except where, in some places, habitations
were thrust into the base of the woods, as in lower
caverns. An exuberant wealth of forms built up
that forest which was so featureless from a httle
distance. The numerous palms gave grace and life
to the facade, for their plumes flung in noble arcs
from tall and slender columns, or sprayed directly
from the ground in emerald fountains. The rest
was inextricable confusion. Vines looped across the
front of green, binding the forest with cordage, and
the roots of epiphytes dropped from upper boughs,
like hanks of twine.
In some places the river widened into lagoons,
and we seemed to be in a maze of islands. Canoes
shot across the waterways, and river schooners,
shaped very like junks, with high poops and blue
and red sails, were diminished beneath the verdure,
betraying the great height of the woods. Because
of its longitudinal extension, fining down to a point
in the distance, the elevation of the forest, when
uncontrasted, looked much less than it really was.
The scene was so luminous, still, and voiceless, it
was so hke a radiant mirage, or a vivid remembrances
of an emotional dream got from books read and read
again, that only the unquestionable verity of our

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 121
iron steamer, present with her smoke and prosaic
gear, convinced me that what was outside us was
there. Across a hatch a large butterfly hovered and
flickered like a flame. Dragon flies were suspended
invisibly over our awning, jewels in shimmering
enamels. • •••••
We anchored just before breakfast, and a small
launch flying a large Brazilian flag was soon fussing
at bur gangway. The Brazilian customs men
boarded us, and the official who was left in charge
to overlook the " Capella " while we remained was
a tall and majestic Latin with dark eyes of such
nobility and brooding melancholy that it never
occurred to me that our doctor, who has travelled
much, was other than a fellow with a dull Anglo-
Saxon mind when he removed some loose property
to his cabin and locked his door, before he went
ashore. So I left my field glasses on the ice-chest ;
and that was the last I saw of them. Yet that
fellow had such lovely hair, as the ladies would say,
and his smile and his courtesy were fit for kings. He
carried a scented pink handkerchief and wore patent
leather boots. Our surgeon had but a faint laugh
when these explanations were made to him, taking
my hand fondly, and saying he loved httle children.
Para, a flat congestion of white buildings and red
roofs in the sun, was about a mile beyond our anchor
age, over the port bow ; and as its name has been
to me one that had the appeal of the world not ours,
like Tripoli of Barbary, Macassar, the Marquesas,
and the Rio Madre de Dios, the agent's launch, as it
took us towards the small craft lying immediately

122 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
before the front of that spread of houses between
the river and the forest, was so momentous an
occasion that the small talk of the dainty English
men in linen suits, a gossipmg group around the
agent and the Skipper, hardly came into the picture,
to my mind. The launch rudely hustled through a
cluster of gaily painted native boats, the dingiest
of them bearing some sonorous name, and I landed
in Brazil.
There was an esplanade, shadowed by an avenue
of mangoes. We crossed that, and went along hot
narrow streets, by blotched and shabby walls, to
the office to which our ship was consigned. We met
a fisherman carrying a large turtle by a flipper. We
came to a dim cool warehouse. There, some negroes
and half-breeds were lazily hauling packages in the
shadows. It had an office railed off where a few
Enghsh clerks, in immaculate white, overlooked a
staff of natives. The warehouse had a strange and
memorable odour, evasive, sweet, and pungent, as
barbaric a note as I found in Para, and I understood
at once I had come to a place where there were things
I did not know. I felt almost timorous and yet
compelled when I sniffed at those shadows ; though
what the eye saw in the squahd streets of the river
side, where brown folk stood regarding us carelessly
from openings in the walls, I had thought no more
than a little interesting.
What length of time we should have in Belem was
uncertain, but presently the Skipper, looking most
morose, came away from his discussion with the
agent and told us, at some length, what he thought
of people who kept a ship waiting because of a few

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 123
unimportant papers. Then he mumbled, very re
luctantly, that we had plenty of time to see all Para.
The Doctor and I were out of that office before the
Skipper had time to change his mind. Our captain is
a very excellent master mariner, but occasionally he
likes to test the security of his absolute autocracy,
to see if it is still sound. I never knew it when it
was not ; but yet he must, to assure himself of a
certainty, or to exercise some devilish choler in his
nature, sometimes beat our poor weak bodies against
the adamant thing, to see which first will break.
I will say for him that he is always polite when hand
ing back to us our bruised fragments. Here he was
giving us a day's freedom, and one's first city of the
tropics in which to spend it ; and we agreed with
him that such a waste of time was almost unbear
able, and left hurriedly.
Outside the office was a small public square where
grew palms which ran flexible boles, swaying with
the weight of their crowns, clear above the surround
ing buildings, shadowing them except in one place,
where the front of a ruinous church showed, topped
by a crucifix. The church, a white and dilapidated
structure, was hoary with ficus and other plants
which grew from ledges and crevices. Through the
crowns of the palms the sunlight fell in dazzling
lathes and partitions, chequering the stones. An
ox-cart stood beneath.
The Paraenses, passing by at a lazy gait — which I
was soon compelled to imitate — in the heat, were
puzzling folk to one used to the features of a race
of pure blood, like ourselves. Portuguese, negro,
and Indian were there, but rarely a true type of one.

124 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
Except where the black was the predominant factor
the men were impoverished bodies, sallow, meagre,
and listless ; though there were some brown and
brawny ruffians by the foreshore. But the women
often were very showy creatures, certainly indolent
in movement, but not listless, and built in notable
curves. They were usually of a richer colour than
their mates, and moved as though their blood were
of a quicker temper. They had slow and insolent
eyes. The Indian has given them the black hau*
and brown skin, the negro the figure, and Portugal
their features and eyes. Of course, the ladies of
Para society, boasting their straight Portuguese
descent, are not included in this insulting description ;
and I do not think I saw them. Unless, indeed, they
were the ladies who boldly eyed us in the fashionable
Para hotel, where we lunched, at a great price, off
imported potatoes, tinned peas, and beef which in
England would be sold to a glue factory ; I mean
the women in those Parisian costumes erring
something on the side of emphasis, and whose re
markable pallor was even a little greenish in the
throat shadows.
After lunch some disappointment and irresolution
crept into our holiday. . . . There had been a time
— but that was when Para was only in a book ; that
was when its mere printed name was to me a token
of the tropics. You know the place I mean. You
can picture it. Paths that go at noon but a httle
way into the jungle which overshadows an isolated
community of strange but kindly folk, paths that end
in a twilight stillness ; ardent hues, flowers of vanilla,
warm rain, a luscious and generative earth, fireflies

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 125
in the scented dusk of gardens ; and mystery —
every outlook disappearing in the dark of the
unknown. Well, here I was, placed by the ordinary moves
of circumstance in the very place the name of which
once had been to me like a chord of that music none
hears but oneself. I stood in Para, outside a picture
postcard shop. Electric cars were bumping down
a narrow street. The ghtter of a cheap jeweller's
was next to the stationer's ; and on the other side
was a vendor of American and Parisian boots. There
have been changes in Para since Bates wrote his
idylls of the forest. We two travellers, after ordering
some red earthenware chatties, went to find Bates'
village of Nazareth. In 1850 it was a mile from the
town. It is part of the town now, and an electric
tram took us there, a tram which drove vultures
off the line as it bumped along. The heat was a
serious burden. The many dogs, which found
energy enough to limp out of the way of the car only
when at the point of death, were thin and diseased,
and most unfortunate to our nice eyes. The Brazilian
men of better quality we passed were dressed in
black cloth suits, and one mocked the equator with
a silk hat and yellow boots. I set down these things
as the tram showed them. The evident pride and
hauteur, too, of these Latins, was a surprise to one of
a stronger race. We stopped at a street corner, and
this was Nazareth. Bates' pleasant hamlet is now
the place of Para's fashionable homes — pleasant
still, though the overhead tram cables, and the
electric light standards which interrupt the avenues
of trees, place you there, now your own turn comes

126 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
to look for the romance of the tropics, in another
century. But the villas are in heliotrope, primrose,
azure, and rose, bowered in extravagant arbors of
papaws, mangoes, bananas, and palms, with shrub
beries beneath of feathery mimosas, and cassias with
orange and crimson blooms. And my last walk ashore
was in Swansea High Street in the winter rain!
From Nazareth's main street the side turnings go
down to the forest. For, in spite of its quays, its
steamers, and its electric trams, Para is but built
in a larger clearing of the wilderness. The jungle
stood at the bottom of all suburban streets,
a definite city wall. The spontaneity and savage
freedom of the plant life in this land of alter
nate hot sun and warm showers at last blurred and
made insignificant to me the men who braved it in
silk hats and broadcloth there, and the trams, and
the jewellers' shops, for my experience of vegetation
was got on my knees in a London suburb, praying
things to come out of the cold mud. Here, I began
to suspect, they beseiged us, quick and turbulent,
an exhaustible army, ready to reconquer the foot
hold man had hardly won, and to obliterate his works.
We passed through by-ways, where naked brown
babies played before the doors. We happened upon
the cathedral, and went on to the little dock where
native vessels rested on garbage, the tide being out.
Vultures pulled at stuff beneath the bilges. The
crews, more Indian than anything, and men of
better body than the sallow fellows in the town,
sprawled on the hot stones of the quays and about
the decks. There was a huge negress, arms akimbo,
a shapeless monument in black indiarubber draped

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 127
in cotton print, who talked loudly with a red bone
less mouth to two disregarding Indians sitting with
their backs to a wall. She had a rabbit's foot,
mounted in silver, hanging between her dugs. The
schooners, ranged in an arcade, were rigged for lateen
sails, very like Mediterranean craft. The forest was
a narrow neutral tinted ribbon far beyond. The
sky was blue, the texture of porcelain. The river
was yellow. And I was grievously disappointed ;
yet if you put it to me I cannot say why. There
was something missing, and I don't know what.
There was something I could not find ; but as it is
too intangible a matter for me to describe even now,
you may say, if you like, that the fault was with me,
and not with Para. We stood in a shady place, and
the doctor, looking down at his hand, suddenly
struck it. " Let us go," he said. He showed me
the corpse of a mosquito. " Have you ever seen the
yellow fever chap ? " the Doctor asked. " That is
he." We left.
Near the agent's office we met an English shipping
clerk, and he took us into a drink shop, and sat us
at a marble-topped table having gilded iron legs,
and called for gin tonics. We began to tell him
what we thought of Para. It did not seem much of
a place. It was neither here nor there.
He was a pallid fellow with a contemplative smile,
and with weary eyes and tired movements. " I
know all that," he said. " It's a bit of a hole. Still —
You'd be surprised. There's a lot here you don't
see at first. It's big. All out there — he waved his
arm west inclusively — it's a world with no light yet.
You get lost in it. But you're going up. You'll

128 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
see. The other end of the forest is as far from the
people in the streets here as London is — it's farther—
and they know no more about it. I was like you
when I first came. I gave the place a week, and
then reckoned I knew it near enough. Now, I'm
— well, I'm half afraid of it . . . not afraid of any
thing I can see ... I don't know. There's some
thing dam strange about it. Something you never
can find out. It's something that's been here since
the beginning, and it's too big and strong for us. It
waits its time. I can feel it now. Look at those
palm trees, outside. Don't they look as if they're
waiting ? What are they waiting for ? You get
that feehng here in the afternoon when you can't
get air, and the rain clouds are banking up round
the woods, and nothing moves. ' Lord,' said a
fellow to me when I first came, 'tell us about Peckham.
But for the spicy talk about yellow fever I'd think
I was dead and waiting wide awake for the judgment
day.' That's just the feeling. As if something
dark was coming and you couldn't move. There the
forest is, all round us. Nobody knows what's at the
back of it. Men leave Para, going up river. We
have a drink in here, and they go up river, and don't
come back.
" Down by the square one day I saw an old hoy
in white ducks and a sun helmet having a shindy
with the sentry at the barracks. The old fellow was
kicking up a dust. He was English, and I suppose
he thought the sentry would understand him, if he
shouted. English and Americans do.
" You have to get into the road here, when you
approach the barracks. It's the custom. The

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 129
sentry always sends you off the pavement. The
old chap was quite red in the face about it. And
the things he was saying ! Lucky for him the
soldier didn't know what he meant; So I went
over, as he was an Englishman, and told him
what the sentry wanted. ' What,' said the man,
' walk in the road ? Not me. I'd sooner go
back.' " Go back he did, too. I walked with him and
we got rather pally. We came in here. We sat at
that table in the corner. He said he was Captain
Davis, of Barry. Ever heard of him ? He said
he had brought out a shallow-draught river boat,
and he was taking her up the Rio Japura. The way
he talked ! Do you know the Japura ? Well, it's
a deuce of a way from here. But that old captain
talked — he talked like a child. He was so obstinate
about it. He was going to take that boat up the
Japura, and you'd have thought it was above
Boulter's Lock. Then he began to swear about the
dagoes. "The old chap got quite wild again when he
thought of that soldier. He was a little man, nothing
of him, and his face was screwed up as if he was
always annoyed about something. You have to
take things as they come, here, and let it go. But
this Davis man was an irritable old boy, and most
of his talk was about money. He said he was through
with the boat running jobs. No more of 'em. It
was as bare as boards. Nothing to be made at the
game, he said. Over his left eye he had a funny
hairy wart, a sort of knob, and whenever he got
excited it turned red. I may say he let me pay for
i

130 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
all the drinks. I reckon he was pretty close with
his money.
" He told me he knew a man in Barry who'd got
a fine pub — a little gold-mine. He said there was
a stuffed bear at the pub and it brought lots of
customers. Seemed to think I must know the place.
He said he was going to try to get an alligator for the
chap who kept the pub. The alligator could stand
on its hind legs at the other side of the door, with
an electric bulb in its mouth, like a lemon. That
was his fine idea. He reckoned that would bring
customers. Then old Davis started to fidget about.
I began to think he wanted to tell me something,
and I wondered what the deuce it was. I thought
it was money. It generally is. At last he told me.
He wanted one of those dried Indian heads for that
pub. 'You know what I mean,' he said. 'The
Indians kill somebody, and make his head smaller
than a baby's, and the hair hangs down all round.'
" Have you ever seen one of those heads ? The
Indians bone 'em, and stuff 'em with spice and gums,
and let 'em dry in the sun. They don't look nice.
I've seen one or two."
" But I tried to persuade him to let the head go.
The Government has stopped that business, you
know. Got a bit too thick. If you ordered a head,
the Johnnies would just go out and have somebody's
napper. " I missed old Davis after that. I was transferred
to Manaos, up river. I don't know what became of
him. It was nearly a year when I came back to
Para. Our people had had the clearing of that boat
old Davis brought out, and I found some of his

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 131
papers, still unsettled. I asked about him, in a
general way, and found he hadn't arrived. His tug
had been back twice. When it was here last it
seemed the native skipper explained Davis went
ashore, when returning, at a place where they
touched for rubber. He went into the village and
didn't come back. Well, it seems the skipper waited.
No Davis. So he tootled his whistle and went on up
stream, because the river was falling, and he had
some more stations to do in the season. He was at
the village again in a few days, though, and Davis
wasn't there then. The tug captain said the village
was deserted, and he supposed the old chap had
gone down river in another boat. But he's not back
yet. The boss said the fever had got him, somewhere.
That's the way things go here.
" A month ago an American civil engineer touched
here, and had to wait for a boat for New York. He'd
been right up country surveying for some job or
another, Peru way. I went up to his hotel with the
fellows to see him one evening. He was on his knees
packing his trunks. 'Say, boys,' he said, sitting
on the floor, ' I brought a whole lot of truck from
way up, and now it hasn't got a smile for me.' He
offered me his collection of butterflies. Then the
Yankee picked up a ball of newspaper off the floor,
and began to peel it. 'This goes home,' he said.
' Have you seen anything like that ? I bet you
haven't.' He held out the opened packet in his
hand, and there was a brown core to it. ' I reckon
that is thousands of years old,' said the American.
" It was a little dried head, no bigger than a cricket
ball, and about the same colour. Very like an

132 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
Indian's too. The features were quite plain, and
there was a tiny wart over the left eye-brow. 'I
bet you that's thousands of years old,' said the
American. ' I bet you it isn't two,' I said."
We returned to the steamer in the late afternoon,
bringing with us two Brazilian pilots, Who were to
take us as far as Ita-coatiara. We sailed next
morning for the interior. Para, like all the towns
on the Amazon, has but one way out of it. There
is a continent behind Para, but you cannot go that
way ; when you leave the city you must take the
river. Para stands by the only entrance to what
is now the greatest region of virgin tropics left in
the world. Always at anchor off the city's front
are at least a dozen European steamers, most of
them flying the red ensign. A famous engineering
contractor, also British, is busy constructing modern
wharves there ; and Thames tugs and mudhoppers,
flying the Brazilian flag, as the law insists, but bawling
London compliments as they pass your ship, help the
native schooners with their rakish lateen sails, blue
and scarlet, to make the anchorage brisk and lively.
Looking out from the " Capella's " bridge she
appeared to be within a lagoon. The lake was
elliptical, and so large it was a world for the
eye to range in. It was bound by a low barrier
of forest, a barrier distant enough to lose colour,
nature, and significance. Para, white and red, lay
reflecting the sunset from many facets in the south
west, with a cheerful array of superior towers and
spires. From the ship Para looked big, modern,
and prosperous ; and with those vast rounded clouds

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 133
of the rains assembling and mounting over the bright
city, and brooding there, impassive and dark, but
with impending keels lustrous with the burnish
of copper and steel, and seeing a rainbow curv
ing down from one cloud over the city's white
front, I, being a new-comer, and with a pardon
able feeling of exhilaration which was of my own
well-being in a new and a wide and radiant place,
thought of man there as a conqueror who had over
come the wilderness, builded him a city, bridled the
exuberance of a savage land, and directed the sap
and life, born in a rich soil of ardent sun and rain, into
the forms useful to him. So I entered the chart-
room, and looked with a new interest on the chart
of the place. Then I felt less certain of the conqueror
and his taming bridle. I saw that this lagoon in
which the " Capella " showed large and important
was but a point in an immense area of tractless
islands and meandering waterways, a region intricate,
and, the chart confessed, little known. The coast
opposite the city, which I had taken for mainland,
was the trivial Ihla des Oncas. The main channel
of the river was beyond that island, With the
coast of Marajo for the farther shore ; and Marajo
also was but an island, though as large as Wales.
The north channel of the Amazon was beyond again,
with more islands, about which the chart confessed
less knowledge. One of the pilots was with me ;
and when I spoke of those points in the ultimate
Amazons, the alluring names on maps you read in
England, here they were, at Para, just what they are
at home, still vague and far, journeys thither to be
reckoned by time ; a shrug of the shoulders and a

134 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
look of amusement ; two months, Senhor, or perhaps
three or four. The idea came slowly ; but it dawned,
something like the conception of astronomy's ampli
tudes, of the remoteness of the beyond of Amazonas,
that new world I had just entered.
I crept within the mosquito curtain that night,
and the still heated dark lay on my mind, the pressure
of an unknown full of dread. I thought of the pale
shipping clerk and his tired smile, and of Captain
Davis, his face no bigger than a cricket ball, and the
same colour, with a wart over his eye ; and recalled
the anxious canvass I had heard made for news of
sickness up-river. A ship had passed outwards that
morning, the consul told us, with twenty men on
board down with fever.
And Thorwaldsen. I forgot to tell you about
Thorwaldsen. He was a trader, and last rainy
season he took his vessel up some far backwater,
beyond Manaos, with his wife and his little daughter.
News had just come from nowhere to Para that his
wife had died in childbirth in the wilds, and Thor
waldsen had been murdered ; but nothing was known
of his daughter. There it was. I did not know the
Thorwaldsens. But the trader's little girl who
might then be alone in the gloom of the jungle with
savages, helped to keep me awake. And the wife,
that fair-haired Swede ; she was in the alien wilder
ness, beyond all gentlehood, when her time came.
I could see two mosquitoes doing their best to wOrk
backwards through the curtain mesh. They were
after me, the emissaries of the unknown, and their
pertinacity was astonishing.

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 135
" Jan. 9. The ' Capella ' left Para at three
o'clock this morning, and continued up the Para
River. Daylight found us in a wide brownish stream,
with the shores low and indistinguishable on either
beam. When the sun grew hot, the jungle came
close in ; it was often so close that we could see the
nests of wasps on the trees, like grey shields hanging
there. Between the Para River and the Amazon the
waters dissipate into a maze of serpenting ditches.
In width these channels usually are no more than
canals, but they were deep enough to float our
big tramp steamer. They thread a multitude of
islands, islands overloaded with a massed growth
which topped our mast-heads. Our steamer was
enclosed within resonant chasms, and the noise and
incongruity of our progress awoke deep protests
there. " The dilated loom of the rains, the cloud shapes
so continental that they occupied, where they stood
not so far away, all the space between the earth and
sky, bulged over the forest at the end of every view.
The heat was luscious ; but then I had nothing to
do but to look on from a hammock under the awning.
The foliage which was pressed out over the water,
not many yards from the hurrying ' Capella,' had a
closeness of texture astonishing, and even awful, to
one who knew only the thin woods of the north. It
ascended directly from the water's edge, sometimes
out of the water, and we did not often see its founda
tion. There were no shady aisles and glades. The
sight was stopped on a front of polished emerald, a
congestion of stiff leaves. The air was still. In
dividual sprays and fronds, projecting from the mass

136 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
in parabolas with flamboyant abandon and poise,
were as rigid as metallic and enamelled shapes. The
diversity of forms, and especially the number and
variety of the palms, so overloaded an unseen stand
ing that the parapets of the woods occasionally
leaned outwards to form an arcade above our masts.
One should not call this the jungle ; it was even a
soft and benignant Eden. This was the forest I
really wished to find. Often the heavy parapets of
the woods were upheld on long colonnades of grey
palm boles ; or the whole upper structure appeared
based on low green arches, the pennate fronds of
smaller palms flung direct from the earth.
" There was not a sound but the noise of our in
truding steamer. Occasionally we brushed a pro
jecting spray, or a vine pendent from a cornice. We
proved the forest then. In some shallow places
were regiments of aquatic grasses, bearing long
plumes. There were trees which stood in the water
on a tangle of straight pallid roots, as though on stilts.
This up-burst of intense hfe so seldom showed the
land to which it was fast, and the side rivers and
paranas were so many, that I could believe the
forest afloat, an archipelago of opaque green vapours.
Our heavy wash swayed and undulated the aquatic
plants and grasses, as though disturbing the fringe
of those green clouds which clung to the water
because of their weight in a still air.
" There was seldom a sign of life but the infrequent
snowy herons, and those curious brown fowl, the
ciganas. The sun was flaming on the majestic
assembly of the storm. The warm air, broken by
our steamer, coiled over us in a lazy flux. I did not

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 137
hear the bell calling to meals. We all hung over the
' Capella's ' side, gaping, like a lot of boys.
"Sometimes we passed single habitations on the
water side. Ephemeral huts of palm-leaves were
forced down by the forest, which overhung them,
to wade on frail stilts. A canoe would be tied to a
toy jetty, and on the jetty a sad woman and several
naked children would stand, with no show of emotion,
to watch us go by. Behind them was the impene
trable foliage. I thought of the precarious tenure on
earth of these brown folk with some sadness, especi
ally as the day was going. The easy dominance of
the wilderness, and man's intelligent morsel of hfe
resisting it, was made plain when we came suddenly
upon one of his little shacks secreted among the
aqueous roots of a great tree, cowering, as it were,
between two of the giant's toes. Those brown
babies on the jetties never cheered us. They watched
us, serious and forlorn. Alongside their primitive
hut were a few rubber trees, which we knew by their
scars. Late in the afternoon we came to a large
cavern in the base of the forest, a shadowy place
where at last we did see a gathering of the folk.
A number of little wooden crosses peeped above
the floor in the hollow. The sundering floods
and the forest do not always keep these folk
from congregation, and the comfort of the last
communion. " There was a question at night as to whether our
pilots would anchor or not. They decided to go on.
We did not go the route of Bates, via Breves, but took
the Parana de Buyassa on our way to the Amazon. It
was night when we got to the parana, and but for the

138 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
trailing lights, the fairy mooring lines of habitations'
in the woods, and what the silent explosions of
hghtning revealed of great heads of trees, startlingly
close and monstrous, as though watching us in silent
and intent regard, we saw nothing of it."
Once I knew a small boy, and on a summer day
too much in the past now to be recalled without
some private emotion, he said to his father, on the
beach of a popular East Anglian resort, " And where
is the sea ? " He stood then, for the first time,
where the sea, by all the promises of pictures and
poems, should have been breaking on its cold grey
crags. " The sea ? " said the father, in astonishment,
" why, there it is. Didn't you know ? "
And that father, being an exact man, there beyond
appeal the sea was. And what was it ? A dis
coloured wash, of mean limit, which flopped wearily
on some shabby sands littered with people and
luncheon papers. Such a flat, stupid, and leaden
disillusion surely never before fell on the upturned,
bright and expectant soul of a young human, who,
I can vouch, began life, hke most others, believing
the noblest of everything. It was an ocean which
was inferior even to the bathing-machines, and could
be seen but in division when that child, walking
along the rank of those boxes on wheels, peeped
between them.
You will have noticed with what simple indifference
the people who really know what they call the truth
will shatter an illusion we have long cherished;
though, as we alone see our private dreams, those
honest folk cannot be blamed for poking their feet

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 139
through fine pictures they did not know were
there. I had a picture of the Amazon, which I had long
cherished. I was leaning to-day over the bulwarks
of the " Capella," watching the jungle pass. The
Doctor was with me. I thought we were still on the
Para River, and was waiting for our vessel to emerge
from that stream, as through a narrow gate, dramati
cally, into the broad sunlight of the greatest river in
the world, the king of rivers, the Amazon of my
picture. We idly scanned the forest with binoculars,
having nothing to do, and saw some herons, and the
ciganas, and once a sloth which was hanging to a tree.
Para, I felt, was as distant as London. The silence, the
immobihty of it all, and the pour of the tropic sun,
were just beginning to be a little subduing. We had
come already to the wilderness. There was, I thought,
a very great deal of this forest ; and it never varied.
" We shall be on the Amazon soon," I said hope
fully, to the doctor.
" We have been on it for hours," he replied. And
that is how I got there.
But the Amazon is not seen, any more than is the
sea, at the first glance. What the eye first gathers,
is, naturally (for it is but an eye), nothing like com
mensurate with your own image of the river. The
mind, by suggestive symbols, builds something
portentous, a vague and tremendous idea. What
I saw was only a very swift and opaque yellow flood,
not much broader, it seemed to me, than the Thames
at Gravesend, and the monotonous green of the
forest. It was all I saw for a considerable time.
I see something different now. It is not easily

140 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
explained merely as a yellow river, with a verdant
elevation on either hand, and over it a blue sky.
It would be difficult to find, except by luck, a word
which would convey the immensity of the land of
the Amazons, something of the aloofness and separa
tion of the points of its extremes, with months and
months of adventure between them. What a
journey it would be from Ino in Bolivia, on the
Rio Madre de Dios, to Conception in Colombia, on
the Rio Putumayo ; there is another " Odyssey " ina
voyage like that. And think of the names of those
places and rivers ! When I take the map of South
America now, and hold it with the estuary of the
Amazon as its base, my thoughts are hke those
might be of a lost ant, crawhng in and over the
furrows and ridges of an exposed root as he regards
all he may of the trunk rising into the whole upper
cosmos of a spreading oak. The Amazon then looks
to me, properly symbolical, as a monstrous tree,
and its tributaries, paranas, furos, and igarapes, as
the great boughs, little boughs, and twigs of its
ascending and spreading ramifications, so minutely
dissecting the continent with its numberless water
courses that the mind sees that dark region as an
impenetrable density of green and secret leaves;
which, literally, when you go there, is what you will
find. You enter the leaves, and vanish. You creep
about the region of but one of its branches, under a
roof of foliage which stays the midday shine and lets
it through to you in the dusk of the interior but as
points of distant starlight. Occasionally, as we did
upon a day, you see something hke Santarem. There
is a break and a change in the journey. Moving

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 141
blindly through the maze of green, there, hanging in
the clear day at the end of a bough, is a golden fruit.
" Jan. 10. The torrid morning, tempered by a
coohng breeze which followed us up river, was soon
overcast. Disappointingly narrow at first, the
Amazon broadened later, but not to one's conception
of its magnitude. But the greatness of this stream,
I have already learned, dawns upon you in time,
and if you sufficiently endure. It persists about
you, this forest and this river, like the stark desola
tion of the sea. The real width of the river is not
often seen because of the islands which fringe its
banks, many of them of considerable size. The side
channels, or paranas-miris, between the islands and
the shores, are used in preference to the main stream
by the native sailing craft, to avoid the strength
of the current. We had the river to ourselves.
The ' Capella ' was taken by the pilots, first over to
one side and then to the other, dodging the set of
the stream. The forest has changed. It has now
a graceless and savage aspect when we are close to
it. There are not so many palms. At a little
distance the growth appears a mass of spindly oaks
and beeches, though with a more vivid and fighter
green foliage. But when near it shows itself alien
enough, a front of nameless and congested leaves. I
suppose it would be more than a hundred feet in alti
tude. Sometimes the forest stands in the water. At
other times a yellow bank shows, a narrow strip under
the trees, rarely more than four feet high, and strewn
with the bleaching skeletons of trees and entangle
ments of vine. There is rarely a sign of life. Once this

142 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
morning a bird called in the woods when we were
close. Butterflies are continually crossing the ship,
and dragon-flies and great wasps and hornets are
hawking over us. The sight of one swallowtail
butterfly, a big black and yellow fellow, sent the
cook insane. The insect stayed its noble flight,
poised over our hatch, and then came down to see
what we were. It settled on a coil of rope, leisurely
pulsing its wings. The cook, at the sight of this
bold and bright being, sprang from the galley, and
leaped down to the deck with a dish cloth. To our
surprise he caught the insect, and explained with
eagerness how that the shattered pattern of colours,
which more than covered his gross palm, would
improve his fire-screen in a Rotterdam parlour.
"Early in the forenoon sections of the forest
vanished in grey rain squalls, though elsewhere the sun
was brilliant. The plane of the dingy yellow flood was
variegated with transient areas of bright sulphur
and chocolate. We were hugging the right bank,
and so saw the mouth of the Xingu as we passed.
At midday some hills ahead, the Serra de Almerim,
gave us relief from the dead level of the wearying
green walls. The sight of those blue heights with
their flat top's — they were perhaps no more than
1000 feet above the forest — curiously stimulated
the eye and lifted one's humour, long depressed
by the everlasting sameness of the prospect and the
heat. Later in the day we passed more of the
welcome hills, the Serra de Maranuaqua, Velha
Pobre, and Serras de Tapaiunaquara and Parana-
quara, their cones, truncated pyramids, knolls and
hog backs, ranging contrary to our course. Bates

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 143
says some of them are bare, or covered only with a
short herbage ; but all those I examined with a
good telescope had forest to the summits ; though
a few of the inferior heights, which stood behind the
island of Jurupari (the island where dreams come at
night) were grassy. Those cobalt prominences rose
like precipitous islands from a green sea. We were
the only spectators. One high range, as we passed,
was veiled in a glittering mesh of rain. The river,
after we left Jurupari, bent round, and brought the
heights astern of us. The sun set.
"The river and the forest are best at sundown.
The serene level rays discovered the woods. We
saw trees then distinctly, almost as a surprise. Till
then the forest had been but a gloom by day. Be
hind us was the jungle front. It changed from green
to gold, a band of light between the river and the
darkling sky. Some greater trees emerged majesti
cally. It was the first time that day we had really
seen the features of the jungle. It was but a
momentary revelation^, The clouds were reflectors,
throwing amber lights below. In the hills astern
of us ravines hitherto unsuspected caught the transi
tory glory. The dark heights had many pohshed
facets. One range, round-shouldered and wooded,
I thought resembled the promontories about Clovelly,
and for a few minutes the Amazon had the bright
eyes of a friend. On a ridge of those heights I could
see the sky through some of its trees. The light
quickly gave out, and it was night.
"We continued cruising along the south shore.
The usual pulsations of lightning made night inter
mittent ; the forest was not more than 150 feet

144 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
from our vessel, and sitting under the awning the
trees kept jumping out of the night, startlingly near.
The night was still and hot, and my cabin lamp had
attracted myriads of insects through the door which
had been left open for air. A heap of crawlers lay
dead on the desk, and the bunk curtain was smothered
with grotesque winged shapes, flies, cicadas, mantis,
phasmas, moths, beetles, and mosquitoes."
• ••••»
Next morning found us running along the north
shore. Parrots were squawking in the woods along
side. A large alligator floated close by the ship,
its jaws open in menace. At breakfast time a strip
of white beach came into view on the opposite coast,
a place in that world of three colours on which one's
tired eyes could alight and rest. That was Santarem.
Sharp hills rose immediately behind the town. The
town is in a saddle of the hills, slipping down to the
river in terraces of white, chrome, and blue houses.
The Rio Tapajos, a black water tributary and a
noble river, enters the main stream by Santarem,
its dark flood sharply contrasted with the tawny
Amazon. But the Amazon sweeps right across its
mouth in a masterful way. There is a definite Une
dividing black from yellow water, and then no more
Tapajos. We passed numerous floating islands (Ilhas de
Caapim) and trees adrift, evidence, the pilots said,
that the river was rising. These grass islands are a
feature of the Amazon. They look hke lush pastures
adrift. Some of them are so large it is difficult to
believe they are really afloat till they come along
side. Then, if the river is at all broken by a breeze,

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 145
the meadow plainly undulates. This floating cane
and grass grows in the sheltered bays and quiet
paranas-miris, for though the latter are navigable
side-channels of the river in the rainy season, in the
dry they are merely isolated swamps. But when
the river is in flood the earth is washed away from
the roots of this marsh growth, and it moves off, a
flourishing, mobile field, often twenty feet in thick
ness. Such islands, when large, can be dangerous
to small craft. Small flowers blossom on these
aquatic fields, which shelter snakes and turtles,
and sometimes the peixe-boi, the manatee.
Obydos was in sight in the afternoon, but presently
we lost it in a violent squall of rain. The squall
came down like a gun burst, and nearly carried
away the awnings. It was evening before we
were abreast of that most picturesque town I saw
on the river. Obydos rests on one of the rare
Amazon cliffs of rufus clay and sandstone. The
forest mounts the hill above it, and the scattered
red roofs of the town show in a surf of foliage. The
cliffs glowed in cream and cherry tints, with a cascade
of vines falling over them, though not reaching the
shore. The dainty little houses sit high in a loop of the
cliffs. We left the city behind, with a huge cumulus
cloud resting over it, and the evening light on all.
But Obydos and sunsets and rain squalls, and
the fireflies which flit about the dark ship at night
in myriads, tiny blue and yellow glow-lamps which
burn with puzzling inconstancy, as though being
switched on and off, though they help me with this
narrative, yet candour compels me to tell you that
they take up more space in this book than they do

146 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
m the land of the Amazon. They were incidental
and small to us, dominated by the shadowing presence
of the forest.
We have been on the river nearly a week. But
our steamer's decks, even by day, are deserted now.
We lean overside no longer looking at this strange
country. The heat is the most noteworthy fact,
and drives every one to what little leeward to the
glare there is. Our cook, who is a salamander of a
fellow, and has no need to fear the possibilities of
his future life — though I do not remember he ever
told me he was really thoughtful for them — feeling
a httle uncomfortable one day when at work on our
dinner, glanced at his thermometer, and fled in terror.
It registered 134°. He begged me to go in and
verify it, and once inside I was hardly any time doing
that. We have such days, without a breath of air,
and two vivid walls of still jungle, and between them
a yellow river serpentining under the torrid sun, and
a silence which is like deafness.
Under the shadow of the awning aft, in his deck
chair, the Doctor is preparing our defences by sound
ing a profound volume on tropical diseases. This
gives us but httle confidence ; though, as to our
surgeon, recently I overheard one fireman to another,
" I tell yer the— doc's a Man. That's what he is."
(This is the result of the gin with the quinine.) Yet,
good man as he is, his book on the consequences of
the tropics is so large that we fear we all cannot
escape so many impediments to joy. But our
health's guardian is careful we do not anticipate any
thing from peeps into the mysteries. He never
leaves his big book about, much as some of us would

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 147
like to see the pictures in it, after what the donkey-
man told us.
This is how it was. Donkey, in spite of instruc
tions, and I know how emphatic the Skipper usually
is, slept on deck away from his mosquito bar a few
nights ago. He said at the time that he wasn't
afraid of them little fanciful biters, or something of
the kind. I have no doubt the Doctor would have
had some trouble in making clear to Donkey's under
standing exactly what are the links, delicate but
sure, between mosquitoes and dissolution and decay
in man. So he showed Donkey a picture. I wish
I knew what it was — but the surgeon preserves the
usual professional reticence in the affairs of his
patients. For now Donkey is convinced it is very
bad to sleep outside bis curtain, and when he tries
to tell us how unwholesome such sleeping can be,
just at the point when he gets most entertaining
his vocabulary wears into holes and tatters. You
could not conjure that man from his curtain now, no,
not if you showed him, in a vision, Cardiff, and the
fairy lights of all its dock hotels. I know that in the
Doctor's book there is a picture of a negro who ac
quired, in a superb way, a wonderful form of ele
phantiasis, for the Doctor showed it to me once, as
a treat, when he thought I was growing slack and
bored. We require now such childish laughter at each
other's discomfiture to break the spell of this land
into which we are sinking deeper. Still the forest
ghdes by. It is a shadow on the mind. It stands
over us, an insistent riddle, every morning when
I look out from my bunk. I watch it all day,

148 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
drawn agamst my will ; and as day is dying it is
still there, paramount, enigmatic, silent, its question
implied in its mere persistence — meeting me again
on the next day, still with its mute interrogation.
We have been passing it for nearly a week. It
should have convinced me by now that it is some
thing material. But why should I suppose it is
that ? We have had no chance to examine it. It
does not look real. It does not remind me of any
thing I know of vegetation. When you sight your
first mountains, a delicate and phantom gleam
athwart the stars, are you reminded of the substance
of the hills ? I have been watching it for so long,
this abiding and soundless forest, that now I think
it is like the sky, intangible, an apparition ; what
the eye sees of the infinite, just as the eye sees a
blue colour overhead at midday, and the glow of the
Milky Way at night. For the mind sees this forest
better than the eye. The mind is not deceived by
what merely shows. Wherever the steamer drives
the forest recedes, as does the sky at sea ; but it
never leaves us.
The jungle gains nothing, and loses nothing, at
noon. It is only a sombre thought still, as at mid
night. It is still, at noon, so obscure and dumb a
presence that I suspect the sun does not illuminate
it so much as reveal our steamer in its midst. We
are revealed instead. The presence sees us advancing
into its solitudes, a small, busy, and impudent
intruder. But the forest does not greet, and does
not resent us. It regards us with the vacancy of
large composure, with a lofty watchfulness which has
no need to show its mind. I think it knows our fears

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 149
of its domain. It knows the secret of our fate. It
makes no sign. The pallid boles of the trees, the
sentinels by the water with the press of verdure
behind them, stand, as we pass, like soundless ex
clamations. So when we go close in shore I find
myself listening for a chance whisper, a careless
betrayal of the secret. There is not a murmur in
the host ; though once a white bird flew yauping from
a tree, and then it seemed the desolation had been
surprised into a cry, a prolonged and melancholy
admonition. Following that the silence was deepened,
as though an indiscretion were regretted. A sus
tained and angry protest at our presence would have
been natural ; but not that infinite line of lofty trees,
darkly superior, silently watching us pass.
• • • • • •
One night we anchored off the south shore in twenty
fathoms, but close under the trees. At daybreak we
stood over to the opposite bank. The river here was
of great width, the north coast being low and in
distinct. These tacks across steam look so purpose
less, in a place where there are no men and all the
water looks the same. You go over for nothing.
But this morning, high above the land ahead, some
specks were seen drifting hke fragments of burnt
paper, the sport of an idle and distant wind. Those
drifting dots were urubus, the vultures, generally the
first sign that a settlement is near. To come upon
a settlement upon the Amazons is like landfall at
sea. It brings all on deck. And there, at last, was
Ita-coatiara or Serpa. From one of the infrequent,
low, ferruginous cliffs of this river the jungle had been
cleared, and on that short range of modest, undulating

150 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
heights which displaced the green palisades with
soft glowings of rose, cherry, and orange rock, the
sight escaped to a disorder of arboured houses, like a
disarray of little white cubes ; Serpa was, in appear
ance, half a basketful of white bricks shot into a
portico of the forest.
That morning was no inducement to exertion,
but when an Indian paddled his canoe alongside
our anchored steamer the Doctor and the Purser
got into it, and away. The hot earth would be a
change from hot iron. Besides, I was eager for my
first walk in equatorial woods. Our steamer was
anchored below the town, off a small campo,
or clearing. The native swashed his canoe into a
margin of floating plants, which had rounded leaves
and inflated stalks, like buoys. I looked at them,
and indeed at the least thing, as keenly as though we
were now going to land in the moon. Nothing
should escape me ; the colour of the mud, the water
tepid to my hand, the bronze canoeman in his pair
of old cotton pants split just where they should
have been scrupulous, and the weeds and grass. I
would drain my tropics to the last precious drop.
I myself was seeing what I had thought others lucky
to have seen. It was like being born into the world
as an understanding adult. We got to a steep bank
of red clay, fissured by the heat, and as hard as
brickwork. Green and brown lizards whisked before
us as we broke the quiet. From the top of the bank
the anchored steamer looked a little stranger. Aboard
her, and she is a busy village. Now she appeared
but a mark I did not recognise in that reticent solitude.
The Amazon was an immensity of water, a plain of

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 151
burnished silver, where headlands, islands, and lines
of cliff were all cut in one level mass of emerald
veined with white. The canoe going downstream
appeared to dissolve in candent vapour. Cloudland
low down over the forest to the south, a far disorder
of violet heights, waiting to fill the sky at sunset
and to shock our unimportance then with convulsions
of blue flames, did not seem more aloof and inac
cessible to me than our immediate surroundings.
The clearing was a small bay in the jungle. A
few statuesque silk-cotton trees, buttressed giants,
were isolated in its centre. A bunch of dun-coloured
cattle with twisted horns stood beneath them, though
the trees gave them no shade, for each grey trunk
was as bare of branches for sixty feet of its length as
a stone column. The wall of the jungle was quite near,
and as I stood watching it intently, I could hear but the
throb of my own life. The faint sibilation of insects
was only as if, in the silence, you heard the sharp
rays of the sun impinge on the earth ; your finer
ear caught that sound when you forgot the ring and
beat of your body. It was something below mere
silence. We approached the wall to the west, as a path
went through the harsh swamp herbage that way,
and entered the jungle. The sun went out almost
at once. It was cellar cool under the trees. We
had no idea where the path would lead us. That
did not matter. No doubt it would be the place
desired. The Doctor walked ahead, and I could
just see his helmet, the way was so narrow and
uncertain. I kept missing the helmet, for every
thing in the half-lighted sohtude was strange. One

152 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
could not keep an eye on a white hat on one's first
equatorial ramble, and only when the quiet was
heavy enough to be a burden did I look up from a
puzzling leaf, or some busy ants, to find myself alone.
There was a feeling that you were being watched ;
but there were no eyes, when you glanced round
quickly. Do you remember that dream which some
times came when we were children ? There were,
I remember, empty corridors prolonging into the
shadows of a nameless house where not a sign
showed of what was there. We went on, and no
words we could think of when we woke could tell
what we felt when we looked into those long silent
aisles of the house without a name ; for we knew
something was there ; but there was no telling what
the thing would be like when it showed. That is
your sensation in a first walk in a Brazilian forest.
I stopped at lianas, and curious foliage, trying to
trace them to a beginning, but rarely with any
success. There were some mantis, which commenced
to run on a tree while I was examining its bark.
They were fike flakes of the bark. For a moment
the tree seemed to quiver its hide at my irritating
touch. Then the Doctor called, and I pushed along
to find him stooping over a land snail, the size of a
man's fist, which rather puzzled him, for it had what
he called an operculum ; that is, a cap such as a
winkle's, only in this case it was as large as a crown
piece. I do not know if it was the operculum, for
my knowledge of such things is small ; but I did feel
this was the only twelfth birthday which had come
to me for many years.
Presently we saw light, as you would from the

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 153
interior of a tunnel. Some beams of sunshine
slanted from a break in the roof to where a tree had
fallen, making a bridge for us across an igaripe,
a stream, that is, large enough to be a way for a
canoe. The sundered, buttressed roots of the tree
formed a steep climb to begin with, but the buttresses
going straight along the trunk as handrails made
crossing the bridge an easy matter. Raising my
hand to a root which was hot in the sun, and watching
a hehcon butterfly, a black and yellow fellow, which
settled near us, slowly open and shut his wings, I
jumped, because it felt as though a lighted match had
dropped into my sleeve. But I couldn't douse it.
It burned in ten places at once. It was a first lesson
in constant watchfulness in this new world. I had
placed my hand in a swarm of inconspicuous fire
ants. The dead tree was ahve with them, and our
passage quickened. We rubbed ourselves hysterically,
for the Doctor had got some too ; and there was no
professional reserve about him that time.
After crossing the igaripe the character of the
forest changed. It was now a growth of wild cacao
trees. Nothing grew beneath them. The floor was
a black paste, littered with dead sticks. The woods
were more open, but darker and more dank than
before. The sooty limbs of the cocao trees grew low,
and filled the view ahead with a perplexity of leafless
and tortured boughs. They were hung about with
fruit, pendent lamps lit with a pale greenish light.
We saw nothing move there but two delicate butter
flies, which had transparent wings with opaque
crimson spots, such as might have been served
Titania herself; yet the gloom and black ooze,

154 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
and the eerie globes, with their illusion of light hung
upon distorted shapes, was more the home of the
fabulous sucuruja, the serpent which is forty feet long.
A dry stick snapping underfoot had the same
effect as that crash which resounds for some em
barrassing seconds when your umbrella drops in a
gallery of the British Museum. The impulse was to
apologise to something. We had been so long in
the twilight, recoiling at nameless objects in the path,
a monstrous legume perhaps a yard long and coiled
like a reptile, seeing things only with a second look,
that the sudden entrance into a malocal, a forest
clearing, which, as though it were a reservoir, the
sun had filled with bright light, was like a plunge
into a warm, fluid, and lustrous element.
In the clearing were the huts of an Indian village;
Only the roofs could be seen, through some plantations
of bananas. Around the clearing, a side of which
was cut off by a stream, was the overshadowing green
presence. Some chocolate babies, as serious as
gnomes, looked up as we came into daylight, opened
their eyes wide, and fled up the path between the
plantains. If I could sing, I would sing the banana. It has
the lovehest leaf I know. I feel intemperate about
it, because I came upon it after our passage through
a wood which could have been underground, a tangle
of bare roots joining floor and ceiling in limitless
caverns. We stood looking at the plantation till
our mind was fed with grace and light. The plantain
jets upwards with a copious stem, and the fountain
returns in broad rippled pennants, falling outwardly,
refined to points, when the impulse is lost. A world

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 155
could not be old on which such a plant grows. It
is sure evidence of earth's vitality. To look at it
you would not think that growing is a long process,
a matter of months and natural difficulties. The
plantain is an instant and joyous answer to the sun.
The midribs of the leaves, powerful but resilient, held
aloft in generous arches the broad planes of trans
lucent green substance. It is not a fragile and
dainty thing, except in colour and form. It is lush
and solid, though its ascent is so aerial, and its
form is content to the eye. There is no green like
that of its leaves, except at sea. The stout midribs
are sometimes rosy, but the banners they hold well
above your upturned face are as the crest of a wave
in the moment of collapse, the day showing through
its fluid glass. And after the place of dead matter
and mummied husks in gloom, where we had been
wandering, this burst of leaves in full light was a
return to hfe.
We continued along the path, in the way of the
vanished children. Among the bananas were some
rubber trees, their pale trunks scored with brown
wounds, and under some of the incisions small tin
cups adhered, fastened there with clay. In most of
the cups the collected latex was congealed, for the
cups were half full of rain-water, which was alive
with mosquito larvae. The path led to the top of
the river bank. The stream was narrow, but full
and deep. A number of women and children were
bathing below, and they looked up stolidly as we
appeared. Some were negligent on the grass, sunning
themselves. Others were combing their long, straight
hair over their honey- and snuff-coloured bodies. The

156 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
figures of the women were full, hssom, and rounded,
and they posed as if they were aware that this place
was theirs. They were as unconscious of their grace
as animals. They looked round and up at us, and
one stayed her hand, her comb half through the
length of her hair, and all gazed intently at us with
faces having no expression but a little surprise;
then they turned again to proceed with their toilets
and their gossip. They looked as proper with their
brown and satiny limbs and bodies, in the secluded
and sunny arbour where the water ran, framed in
exuberant tropical foliage, as a herd of deer.
I had never seen primitive man in his native place
till then. There he was, as at the beginning, and I
saw with a new respect from what a splendid creature
we are derived. It was, I am glad to say, to cheer
the existence of these people that I had put money
in a church plate at Poplar. Poplar, you may have
heard, is a parish in civilisation where an organised
community is able, through its heritage of the best
of two thousand years of rehgion, science, commerce,
and pohtics, to eke out to a finish the lives of its
members (warped as they so often are by arid dis
pensations of Providence) with the humane Poor
Law. The Poor Law is the civilised man's ironic
rebuke to a parsimonious Creator. It is a jest which
will ruin the solemnity of the Judgment Day. Only
the man of long culture could think of such a shatter
ing insult to the All Wise who made this earth too
small for the children He continues to send to it, trail
ing their clouds of glory which prove a sad hindrance
and get so fouled in the fight for standing room on
their arrival. But these savages of the Brazilian

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 157
forest know nothing of the immortal joke conceived
by their cleverer brothers. They have all they want.
Experience has not taught them to devise such a
cosmic mock as a Poor Law. How do these poor
savages five then, who have not been vouchsafed such
hght ? They pluck bananas, I suppose, and eat
them, swinging in hammocks. They hve a purely
animal existence. More than that, I even hear that
should you find a child hungry in an Indian village,
you may be sure all the strong men there are hungry
too. I was not able to prove that ; yet it may be
true there are people to-day to whom the law that
the fittest must survive has not yet been helpfully
revealed. (This is realty the Doctor's fault. I
should never have thought of Poplar if he had not
wondered aloud how those bathers under the palms
managed without a workhouse.)
Behind us were the shelters of these settled Indians,
the " cabaclos," as they are called in Brazil (literally,
copper coloured). Each house was but a square roof
of the fronds of a species of attalea palm, upheld at
each corner by poles seven feet high. The houses
had no sides, but were quite open, except that some
had a quarter of the interior partitioned off with a
screen of leaves. There was a rough attempt at a
garden about each dwelling, with rose bushes
and coleas in the midst of gourds and patches
of maize. The roses were scented, and of the single
briar kind. We entered one of the dwellings, and
surprised a young woman within who was swinging
in a hammock smoking a native pipe of red clay
through a grass stem. One fine limb, free of her
cotton gown to the thigh, hung indolently over

158 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
the hammock, the toes touching the earth and giving
the couch movement Her black hair, all at first we
could see of her head, nearly reached the ground.
A well-grown girl, innocent from head to feet, saw
us enter, and cried to her mother, who rose in the
hammock, threw her gown over her leg, smiled gravely
at us, and alighted, to vanish behind the screen with
the child, reappearing presently with the girl neatly
attired. Other children came, and soon had confid
ence to examine us closely and critically, grave httle
mortals with eyes which spoke the only language
I understood there. The men and women who
gathered stood behind the children, smiling sadly
and kindly. They were gentle, undemonstrative,
and observant, with features of the conventional
Indian type. The men were spare and lithe, of
medium height, wearing only shorts tied with string
below their bronze busts. The women were of fuller
build, with heavier but more cheerful features, and
each was dressed in a single cotton garment, open
above, revealing the breasts.
The noon shadows of the hut, and the trees, were
deep as the stains of ink. A tray of mandioca root,
farinha, was set in the hot sun to dry. Under a
gourd tree was a heap of turtle shells. A little game,
a capybara, and a bird like a crow with a brown
rump, were hung on the screen. But the most
remarkable feature of the house in the forest was its
pets. A pair of parraquets ran in and out the bushes
like green mice. My helmet was tipped over my
eyes, and, looking upwards, there was an audience
of monkeys in the shadow, quite beside themselves
with curiosity. My sudden movement sent them

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 159
off hke fireworks. One was a most engaging little
fellow, a jet-black tamarin slightly larger than a
squirrel. Presently he found courage to come closer,
with a companion, a brown monkey of his own size.
As they sat side by side the Doctor pointed out that
the expressions in the faces of these monkeys showed
temperaments separating them even more widely
than they were separated by those physical differ
ences which made them species. I saw at once,
with some pleasure and a little vanity, that I might
be more nearly related to the friendly cabaclos than
I am to some people in England. The brown chap
would be no doubt a master of industry on the tree
tops, keeping a whole tree to himself, and living on
nuts which others gathered. You could see it in
his keen and domineering look, and in the quick,
casual way he crowded his fellow, who always made
room for him. I have seen such a face, and such
manners, in great industrial centres. They are the
marks of the ablest and best, who get on. His hard,
eager eyes showed censoriousness, cruelty, and
acquisitiveness. But his companion, with a sooty
and hairless face, and black hair parted in the middle
of a frail forehead, was a pal of ours, and knew it.
The brown midget showed angry distrust of us,
knowing what devilry was in his own mind. But
the black, though more delicate and nervous a
monkey, his mind being innocent of secret plots,
had gentleness and faith in his looks, and showed a
laughable and welcome curiosity in us. He made
friendly t\»'" ..ings — not the harsh and menacing
chatter of the other— and perfectly self-possessed,
his pure soul giving him quiethood, examined us in a

160 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
brotherly way with an ebon paw which was as small
and fragile as a black fairy's.
A jabiru stork stood on one leg, beak on breast,
meditating, caring nothing for all that was outside
its ruminating mind. There were parrots on the
cross-ties of the roof, on the floor, on the shoulders
of the women, and in the hands of the children, and
they were getting an interesting time through the
monkeys when their faces were not cocked sideways
at us in a knowing fashion. And what looked hke
a crow was giving bitter and ruthless chase to a young
agouti, in and out of the bare feet of the company.
I have never seen creatures so tame. But Indian
women, as I learned afterwards, have a fine gift for
winning the confidence of wild things, and that
afternoon they took hold of the creatures, anyhow
and anywhere, to bring them for our inspection,
without the captives showing the least alarm or
anger. There were the dogs, too. But they were
like all the dogs we saw in Brazil, looking sorry for
themselves ; and they sat about in case they should
fall if they attempted to stand. Our audience broke
up suddenly, in an uproar of protests, to chase the
brown monkey, who was towing a frantic parrot by
the tail.
We continued our walk, entering the forest again
on another path. Here the growth was secondary,
and the underbush dense on both sides of the trail.
The voices of the village stopped as we entered the
shades, and there was no more sound except when
a bird scurried away heavily, and again, when some
cicadas, the " scissors grinders," suddenly sprang
an astonishing whirring from a tree. The sound

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 161
was as loud as that of a locomotive letting steam
escape in a covered station. At a clearing so small
that the roof of the jungle had been but little broken,
where a hut stood as though at a well-bottom sunk in
a depth of trees, we turned back. That deep well in
the trees contained but httle light, for already it was
being choked with vines. The hut was of the usual
hght construction, though its sides were of leaves,
as well as its roof. I think it was the most melancholy
dwelling I have ever happened on in my wanderings.
It did not look as though it had been long deserted.
There were ashes and a broken flesh-pot outside it.
The entrance was veiled with gross spiders' webs.
On the earth floor within were puddles of rain.
Round it the forest stood, hke night in abeyance. The
tree tops overhung, silently intent on what man had
been doing at their feet. A child's chemise was
stretched on a thorn, and close by was a small grave,
separated by httle sticks from the secular earth.
A dead plant was in the centre of the grave, and a
crude wooden crucifix.
We had plenty of opportunities for exploring
Serpa, for the Amazon that rainy season was slow
in rising, and consequently it would have been unsafe
for us to venture into the Madeira. The tributary
would have been full, but it was necessary for the
waters of the main stream to dam and heighten the
flood of its tributary before we could trust our draught
there. We were nine days at Serpa. The Amazon
would rise as much as a foot one day, and our distance
from the shore would increase perceptibly, with
strong whirling eddies which made the trip ashore

162 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
more difficult. Then it would fall again. Some of
the yellow Amazon porpoises showed alongside
occasionally, and alligators floated about, though
nothing was seen of them but their snouts.
Serpa is a small but growing place. It was but a
missionary settlement of Abacaxis Indians from
the Madeira in 1759, and was called Itacoatiara.
When I was there it was renewing its old importance,
because the Madeira-Mamore railway undertaking
had placed a depot a little to the west of the village.
The Doctor and I spent many memorable days in its
neighbourhood, butterfly - hunting and sauntering.
Though mosquitoes, anopehne and culex, are as
common here as elsewhere in the Brazils — the lighters
which came alongside with cargo for us conveyed
clouds of them, and they took possession of every
dark nook of the " Capella " — it is noteworthy that
Serpa has the reputation, in Amazonas^ of a health
resort. I could find no explanation of that. There
was malaria at Serpa, of course ; but compared
with the really lethal country, a country not so
different in appearance and chmate, of the upper
Madeira, the salubrity of Serpa is perplexing. That
virulent form of malaria pecuhar to some tropical
localities is a phenomenon which medical research has
not yet explained. In the almost unexplored region
of the Rio Madeira the fever is certain to every traveller,
though the land is largely without inhabitants ; and it
is almost equally certain that it will be of the malignant
type. Yet at an old settlement hke Serpa, where
probably every inhabitant has had malaria, and every
mosquito is likely to be a host, the fever is but mild,
and the traveller may escape it entirely.

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 163
By now you will be asking what Itacoatiara is
hke, that community contentedly lost in the secret
forest. I am afraid you will not learn, unless, in
the happy future, you and I select a few friends, a
few books, and erect some houses of palm leaves to
protect us from the too vigorous sun there, and so,
secure from all the really urgent and important
matters which do not matter a twinkle to the eternal
stars, noon it far and secure until the time comes
for the gentle villagers to carry us out and forget
us ; remembering us again when the annual Day
of the Dead comes round. They will leave some
comfortable candles above us that night.
There the earth is a warm and luscious body.
The lazy paths are cool with groves, and in the middle
hours of the sun, when only a few butterflies are
abroad, and the grasshoppers are shrilling in the
quiet, you swing in a hammock under a thatch — the
air has been through some tree in blossom — and
gossip, and drink coffee. Beyond the path of the
village there is — nobody knows what ; not even the
Royal Geographical Society. One heard of a large
and mysterious lake a day's journey inland. No
body knew anything about it. Nobody cared. One
old man once, when hunting, saw its mirror through
the forest's aisles, and heard the multitude of its
birds. The foreshore of the village is rugged with boulders
richly tinctured with iron oxide, and often having
a scoriaceous surface. There we would land, and
scramble up to a street which ends on the height
above the river. It is a broad road, with white,
substantial, one-story houses on either side. The

164 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
dwellings and stores have no windows, but are built
with open fronts, for ventilation. This is Serpa's
main street. It is shaded with avenues of trees.
In the narrower side turnings the trees meet to form
arcades. One day we saw such an avenue covered
with yellow, trumpet-shaped blossoms. Ox-carts
with solid wheels stand in the walks. The sunlight,
broken in the leaves of the trees, patterned the roads
with white fire, and so dappled the cattle that they
were obscure ; you saw the oxen only when they
moved. There is a large square, grass-grown, in the
centre of the village, where stands the church, a
white, simple building with an open belfry in which
the bell hangs plain, bright with verdigris. About
here the merchants and tradesmen of Serpa have
their places. The men, hearty and friendly souls,
walk abroad in clean linen suits and straw hats, and
their ladies, pallid, slight, but often singularly
beautiful, are dressed as Europeans, but without
hats ; sometimes, when out walking late in the day,
a lady would have a scarlet flower in her hair.
By the foreshore were the cabins, of mud and
wood, of the negroes. Beyond the town, the roads
run through the clearings, and end on the forest.
In the clearings were the huts, wattle and daub,
and of leaves, of the settled Indians and half-breeds.
These were often prettily placed beneath groups of
graceful palms. It was in the last direction that
most often we made our way with our butterfly nets
while other folk were sleeping during the sun's
height. The humid heat, I suppose, was really a
trial. One did perspire in an alarming way and
with the least exertion. The Doctor, who carries

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 165
substance, would have dark patches in his khaki
uniform, and would wonder, with foreboding, whether
any more in this life he would catch hold of a cold
jug which held a straight pint in which ice tinkled.
But to me the iflumination, the heat, the odour, and
the quiethood of those noons made fife a great prize.
I will say that my comrade, the Doctor, did much
to make it so, with his gentle fun, and his wide
knowledge of earth-lore. There was so much, where-
ever we went, to keep me on the magic side of time,
and out of its shadow. On the west of the town
were some huts, with plantations of bananas, pine
apples, pawpaws, and maize, where blossomed cannas,
mimosas, passion-flowers, and where other unseen
blooms, especially after rain, made breathing a
sensuous pleasure. There we tried to intercept the
swallow-like flight of big sulphur and orange butter
flies, though never with success. We had more
success with the butterflies in the clearings, where
some new huts stood, beyond the village. Over the
stagnant pools in those open spaces dragon-flies
hovered, fellows that moved, when we approached,
like fines of red light. The butterflies, particularly
a vermilion beauty with black bars on bis wings,
and a swift flier, used to settle and gem the mud
about these pools. Other species frequented the
flowering shrubs which had grown over the burnt
wreckage and stumps of the forest. That area was
full of insects and birds. There we saw daily the
Sauba ants, sometimes called the parasol ants, in
endless processions, each ant holding a piece of leaf,
the size of a sixpenny bit, over its tiny body. Tanagers
shot amongst the bushes like blue projectiles. We

166 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
saw a ficus there on one occasion, of fair size, with
large leathery leaves, which carried a colony of re
markable caterpillars, each about seven inches long,
thick in proportion, blue black in colour with yellow
stripes, and a coral head, and filaments at the latter
end. They were pugnacious worms, fighting each
other desperately when two met on a leaf. The
larvae stripped that tree in a day. We were not
always sure that the people in this part of Serpa
were friendly. Mostly they were half-breeds, vary
ing mixtures of Indian and negro, and no doubt very
superstitious. The rodent's foot was commonly
worn by the women, who* if we took notice of their
children, sometimes would spit, to avert the evil eye.
But when the thunder elouds banked close, and the
air, being still, became loaded with the scent of the
wood fires of the villagers, promising rain, we would
enter a hut, and then always found we were welcome.
Even when kept to the ship for any reason this
country offered constant new things to keep our
thoughts moving. A regatao, the river pedlar,
would bring his roomy montario, the gypsy van
of the river, his family aboard — the wife, the
grandmother, and the sad, shy, little children—
and offer us fruits, and perhaps his monkey and
parrots. Gradually the " Capella " added to her
company. The Chief bought a parrot which had
many Indian and Portuguese phrases. It tried to
climb a funnel guy, in escaping the curiosity of our
terrier, and fell into the river. We fished her out
with a bucket. The vampire bats came aboard
every night. They were not very terrible creatures
to look at ; but we discovered they frequented the

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 167
forecastle for no good purpose. Again, stories
filtered through to us of sickness on the Madeira,
and abruptly they gave the palms and the sunsets
a new light. One man was brought in from beyond
and died of beri-beri. This shook the nerves of one
of our Brazilian pilots, and he refused to go beyond
where we were. As for me, there at Serpa the
" Capella " was at anchor, and we were not near the
Madeira, and seemed never likely to go. I watched
the sunsets. The brief, cool evenings prompted me
(fever in the future or not) to praise and grace.
Crickets chirped everywhere on the ship then, and
the air was full of the sparks of fireflies. You could
smell this good earth.
There was one sunset when the overspreading of
violet clouds would have shut out the day quite,
but that the canopy was not closely adjusted to the
low barrier of forest to the westward. Through that
narrow chink a yellow light streamed, and traced
shapes on the lurid walls and roof which narrowly
enclosed us. This was the beginning of the most
alarming of our daily electrical storms. There was
no wind. Serpa and all the coast facing that rift
where the hght entered our prison, stood prominent
and strange, and surprised us as much as if we had
not looked in that direction till then. The curtain
dropped behind the forest, and all hght was shut
out. We could not see across the ship. Knowing
how strong and bright could be the electrical dis
charges (though they were rarely accompanied by
thunder) when not heralded in so portentous a way,
we waited with some anxiety for this display to
begin. It began over the trees behind Serpa. Blue

168 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
fire flickered low down, and was quickly doused.
Then a crack of fight sprang across the inverted
black bowl from east to west in three quick move
ments. Its instant ramifications fractured all the
roof in a network of dazzling blue lines. The reti
culations of light were fleeting, but never gone.
Night contracted and expanded, and the sharp
sounds, which were not like thunder, might have been
the tumbling flinders of night's roof. We saw not
only the river, and the shapes of the trees and the
village, as in wavering daylight, but their colours.
One flash sheeted the heavens, and its over-bright
glare extinguished everything. It came with an
explosion, like the firing of a great gun close to our
ears, and for a time we thought the ship was struck.
In this effort the storm exhausted itself.
The day before we left for the Madeira we took
aboard sixty head of cattle. They were wild things,
which had been collected in the campo with great
difficulty, and driven into lighters. A rope was
dropped over the horns of each beast : this was
attached to a crane hook, the winch was started,
and up the poor wretch came, all its weight on its
horns, bumping inertly against the ship's side in its
passage, like a bale, and was then dumped in a heap
on deck. This treatment seemed to subdue it.
Each quietly submitted to a halter. Several lost
horns, and one hurt its leg, and had to be dragged
to its place. But, to our great joy — we were watch
ing the scene from the bridge — the Brazilian herds
men on the hghter shouted an anxious warning to
their fellows on our deck as a small black heifer, a

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 169
pot-belhed lump with a stretched neck, rotated in
her unusual efforts to free her horns. She even
bellowed. She bumped heavily against the ship's
side, and tried desperately to find her feet. She was,
and I offered up thanks for this benefit, most plainly
an implacable rebel. The cattlemen, as punishment
for the trouble she had given them ashore, kept her
dangling over the deck, and one got level with her
face and mocked her, slapping her nose. She actually
defied him, though she was quite helpless, with some
minatory sounds. She was no cow. She was in
surrection, she was the hate for tyrants incarnated.
They dropped her. She was up and away like a cat,
straight for the winchman, and tried to get the
winch out of her path, bellowing as she worked.
She put everybody on that deck in the shrouds or on
the forecastle head as she trotted round, with her
tail up, looking for brutes to put them to death.
None of the cows (of course) helped her. By a trick
she was caught, and her horns were lashed down to
a ring bolt in a hatch coaming. Then she tried to
kick all who passed. If the rest of the cattle had
been fike her none would have suffered. Alas !
They were probably all scientific evolutionists,
content to wait for men to become kindly apple-
lovers by slow and natural uplift ; and gravely
deprecated the action of the heifer, from which,
as peaceful cows, they disassociated themselves.
The Indian says that if he eats a morsel of tiger
he becomes fierce and strong. I have not the faith
of the Indian, or I would have begged the heart of
that heifer, and of it I would have brewed gallons
of precious liquor, and brought it home in jars for

170 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
incomparable gifts to the meek at heart who always
do what the herdsmen tell them. The Doctor and I
made a pet of that black cow, to the extent of seeing
she got her rations regularly. It was no joke wading
through manure among a press of nervous animals
on a ship's deck in the tropics, in order to see that a
brave creature was justly dealt with ; particularly
as she swore violently whenever she saw us, looking
up from her tightly tethered head with eyes full of
unabated fury, and tried to get at us on the hatch
above her, bound though she was. What a heart!
For her head was fixed immovably, unlike the others ;
yet, till we arrived at Porto Velho she kept her
fierce spirit, often kicking over her water bucket
with her forefeet. Curse their charity !
With two new pilots, we up-anchored next morning ;
and full of cattle, flies, and new odours, and a gang
of cattlemen who at least appeared villanous, and
carried long knives, the " Capella " continued up
stream for the Madeira. The cattle were sheltered,
as far as possible, with awnings improvised from
spare canvas, and their fodder was bales of American
hay. The Skipper did his best to meliorate the
harsh native methods with dumb things.
And now it seems time to explain why we are
bound for the centre of the American continent,
where the unexplored jungle still persists, and disease
or death, so the legends tell us, come to all white
men who stay there for but a few months. If you
will get your map of the Brazils, begin from Para,
and cruise along the Amazon to the Madeira
River — you turn south just before Manaos —
when you have reached Santo Antonio on the

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 171
tributary stream you have traversed the ultimate
wilderness of a continent, and stand on the threshold
of Bohvia, almost under the shadow of the Andes.
If you find any pleasure in maps, flying in shoes of
that kind when affairs pursue you too urgently (and
I suppose you do, or you would not be so far into
this narrative), you will hardly thank me when I
tell you it is possible for an ocean steamer exceeding
23 feet in draught to make such a journey, and so
break the romance of the obscure place at the end
of it. But it must be said. Even one who travels
for fun should keep to the truth in the matter of a
ship's draught. As a reasonable being you would
prefer to believe the map ; and that clearly shows
the only way there (when the chance comes for you
to take it) must be by canoe, a long and arduous
journey to a seclusion remote, and so the more
deeply desired. It certainly hurts our faith in a
favourite chart to find that its well-defined seaboard
is no barrier to modern traffic, but that, journeying
over those pink and yellow inland areas, which should
have no traffic with great ships, a large cargo steamer,
full of Welsh coal, can come to an anchorage, still
with many fathoms under her, at a point where the
cartographer, for lack of place-names and other
humane symbols, has set the word Forest, with the
letters spread widely to the full extent of his ignor
ance, and so promised us sanctuary in plenty. I
suppose that in a few years those remote wilds, some
how cleared of Indians, jungle, and malaria — though
I do not see how all this can be done — will have no
further interest for us, because it will possess many
of the common disadvantages of civilisation's benefits :

172 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
it will be a point on a regular route of commerce.
I am really sorry for you ; but in the sad and cruel
code of the sailor I can only reply as Jack did when
he got the sole rag of beef in the hash, " Blow you,
Bill. I'm all right." I had the fortune to go when
the route was still much as it was in the first chapter
of Genesis. " But after all," you question me, hope
ful yet, " nothing can be done with 5000 tons of
Welsh cargo in a jungle."
People with the nose for dollars can do wonders.
It would be unwise to back such a doughty opponent
as the pristine jungle with its malaria against people
who smell money there. In the early 'seventies there
was a man with one idea, Colonel George Church. His
idea was to give to Bohvia, which the Andes shuts
out from the Pacific, and two thousand miles of
virgin forest from the Atlantic, a door communicating
with the outside world. He said, for he was an
enthusiast, that Bolivia is the richest country in the
world. The mines of Potosi are in Bohvia. Its
mountains rise from fertile tropical plains to Arctic
altitudes. The rubber tree grows below, and a
climate for barley is found in a few days' journey
towards the sky. But the riches of Bolivia are
locked up. Small parcels of precious goods may be
got out over the Andean barrier, on mule back ; or
they may dribble in a thin stream down the Beni,
Mamore, and Madre de Dios rivers — rivers which
unite not far from the Brazilian boundary to form
the Rio Madeira. The Beni is a very great and deep
river which has a course of 1500 miles before it
contributes its volume to the Madeira. The Rio
Madeira, a broad and deep stream in the rainy

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 173
season, reaches the Amazon in another 1100 miles.
But between Guajara-Merim and San Antonio the
Madeira comes down a terrace 250 miles in length
of nineteen dangerous cataracts. The Bolivian
rubber collectors shoot those rapids in their batelaoes,
large vessels carrying sometimes ten tons of produce
and a crew of a dozen men, when the river is full.
Many are overturned, and the produce and the men
are lost. The Madeira traverses a country notorious
even on the Amazon for its fever, and quite un
explored a mile inland anywhere on its banks ; the
rubber hunters, too, have to reckon with wandering
tribes of hostile Indians.
The country is hke that to-day. Then judge its
value for a railway route in the early 'seventies. But
Colonel Church was a New Englander, and again he
was a visionary, so therefore most energetic and com
pelling ; he soon persuaded the practical business
folk, who seldom know much, and are at the mercy
of every eloquent dreamer, to part with a lot of
money to buy bis Bolivian dream. We do really
find the Colonel, on 1st November 1871, solemnly
cutting the first sod of a railway in the presence of
a party of Indians, with the wild about him which
had persisted from the beginning of things. What
the Indians thought of it is not recorded. Anyhow,
they seem to have humoured the infatuated man
who stopped to cut a square of grass in the land of
the Parentintins, the men who go stark naked, and
make musical instruments out of the shin bones of
their victims.
An English company of engineering contractors
was given the job of building the line, and a small

174 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
schooner, the " Silver Spray," went up to San Antonio
with materials in 1872. Her captain, and some of her
officers, died on the way. A year later the contractors
confessed utter defeat. The jungle had won. They
declared that " the country was a charnel-house,
their men dying hke flies, that the road ran through
an inhospitable wilderness of alternating swamp and
porphyry ridges, and that, with the command of all
the capital in the world, and half its population, it
would be impossible to build the road." (There is
a quality of bitterness in their vehement hate which
I recognise. I heard the same emotional chord
expressed concerning that land, though not because
of failure there, only two years ago.)
But the Bank of England held a large sum in trust
for the pursuance of this enterprise, and after the
lawyers had attended to the trust money in long
debate in Chancery, there was yet enough of it left
to justify the indefatigable colonel in beginning the
railway again. That was in 1876. Messrs Collins,
of Philadelphia, obtained the contract. The road,
of metre gauge, was to be built in three years. The
matter excited the United States into a wonderful
attention. The press there went slightly delirious,
and the excited Eagle was advised that " two Phila-
delphians are to overcome the Madeira rapids, and
to open up to the world a land as fair as the Garden
of the Lord." The little steamer " Mercedita," of
856 tons, with 54 engineers and material, was dis
patched to San Antonio on 2nd January 1878. Her
departure was made an important national occasion,
and it is an historic fact, which may be confirmed by
a reference to the files of Philadelphian papers of

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 175
that date, that strong men, as well as women and
children, sobbed aloud on the departure of the steamer.
The vessel arrived at San Antonio on the 16th
February. They had barely started operations when,
so they said, a Brazilian official told them, betraying
some feehng, " when the English came here they did
nothing but smoke and drink for two days, but
Americans work hke the devil." Yet, by all accounts,
the English method was right. I prefer it, on the
Amazon. The preface to work there should be ex
tended to three or even more days of drinking and
smoking. Yet it must be said that if ever men should have
honour for holding to a duty when it was far more
easy, and even more reasonable, to leave it, then I
submit the claim of those American engineers.
Having lived in the place where many of them died,
and knowing their story, I feel a certain kinship.
There is no monument to them. No epic has been
written of their tragedy. But their story is, I should
tliink, one of the saddest in the annals of commerce.
Of the 941 who left for San Antonio at different times,
221 lost their lives, mostly of disease, though 80
perished in the wreck of a transport ship. That is
far higher a mortahty rate than that of, say, the
South African or the American Civil War.
Few of those men appeared to know the tropics.
They thought " the tropics " meant only prodigal
largess of fruits and sun and a wide latitude of life—
a common mistake. The enterprise became a linger
ing disaster. Their state was already bad when a
supply ship was lost ; and they hopefully waited,
ill and starving, but with a gallant mockery of their

176 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
lot, as their letters and diaries attest, for food and
medicine which were not to reach them. The doctors
continued the daily round of the host of the fever-
stricken, giving them quinine, which was a deceit
made of flour. The wages of all ceased for legal
reasons, and they were in a place where little is
cultivated, and so most food has to be imported in
spite of a tariff which usually doubles the price of
every necessary of life. Some of the survivors,
despairing and heroic souls, attempted to escape on
rafts down the river ; they might as well have tried
to cut their way through the thousand miles of forest
between them and Manaos. The railway under
taking collapsed again, and the clearing, the huts,
and the workshops, and the short line that was
actually laid, were left for the vines and weeds to
bury. But now again the conquering forest is being
attacked. The Madeira-Mamore Railway has been
recommenced, and our steamer, the " Capella," is
taking up supplies for the establishment at Porto
Velho, from which the new railway begins, three
miles this side of San Antonio.

Ill

On the morning of the 23rd January, while we were
still considering, seeing what the sun was hke, and
the languid air, and that we were reduced to tinned
beans, fat bacon, and butter which was oil and flies,
whether it was worth while to note our breakfast
bell — the steward stood swinging it, with the gravity
of a priest, under the break of the poop — a shout came
from the bridge that the Rio Madeira was in view.
As far back as Swansea we had heard legends of
this stream, and they were sufficiently disturbing.
When we arrived at Para we heard more, and worse.
The pifot we engaged there called the Madeira the
" long cemetery." At Serpa, for the first time, we
saw what happened to frail humanity when it ventured
far on the Madeira. One day a river steamer came
to Serpa, with a cargo of men from San Antonio.
The river steamers of the Amazon are vessels of
broad beam and shallow draft, painted the dingy
hue of the river itself, and they have two tiers of
decks, open-air shelves, between the supports of
which the passengers sling their hammocks. The
passengers do not sleep in bunks. This paddle-boat
came throbbing towards where we were at anchor.
It was night, and she was unseen, a palpitation in
the dark accompanied somehow by a fountain of
sparks. Such boats burn wood in their furnaces.
When her noise had ceased, and her lights imper
ii* 177

178 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
ceptibly enlarged as the current dropped her down
abeam of us, a breath of her, a draught of air, passed
our way. I am more familiar now with the odour
malaria causes, but then I thought she must have a
freight of the dead. She anchored. We could see
her loaded hammocks in the fight of the few lamps
she carried. Through the binoculars next morning I
inspected with peculiar interest the row of cadaverous
heads, with black tousled hair, lemon-coloured skins,
open mouths and vacant eyes, which stared at us
over her rails. Each looked as though once it had
peered into the eyes of doom, and then was but
waiting, caring nothing.
There, ahead, was the Madeira now for us. We
were then nearly a thousand miles from the sea, well
within South America. But that meeting-place of
the Amazon and its chief tributary was an expanse
of water surprising in its immensity. As much
light was reflected from the floor as at sea. The
water was oceanic in amplitude. The forest bound
aries were so far away that one could not realise, even
when the time we had been on the river was re
membered as a prolonged monotony, that this was
the centre of a continent. The forest on our port
side was near enough for us to see its limbs and its
vines ; but to the south-west, where we were head
ing for Bohvia, and to the north, the way to the
Guianas, and to the east, out of which we had come,
and to the west* where was Peru, the land was but a
low violet barrier, varying in altitude with distance,
and with silver sections in it, marking the river roads.
In the north-west there was a broad silver path
through the wall, the way to the Rio Negro, Manaos,

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 179
and the Orinoco. In the south the near forest,
being flooded, was a puzzle of islands. As we pro
gressed they opened out as a line of green headlands.
The Madeira appeared to have three widely separated
mouths, with a complexity of intermediate and
connective minor ditches. Indeed, the gate of the
river was a region of inundated jungle. One began
to understand why travellers here sometimes find
themselves on the wrong river.
Our bows turned in to the forest wall, and for a
few minutes I could not see any way for us there.
The jungle parted, and we were on a narrow turgid
flood, the colour of the main river, but swifter ; a
majestic forest was near to either beam. We were
enclosed. And after we entered the Madeira my
dark thoughts of our future at once left me. If they
returned, it was only to be joked about, in the dry
way one does refer to a dread that has been long in
the distance, and then one day takes shape, becomes
material, and settles down with us. Its form, as
you know, nearly always allays your alarms. Your
simple mind has expected something with the lower
ing face of evil. Lo ! evil has even bright eyes. Its
nature, its dark craft which you have dreaded, is not
seen, and your mind grows fight with surprise.
What, only this, then ?
I never saw earth look more resplendent and
chromatic than on the day when we entered that
river with a bad name. Presently, I thought — here
was a brief resurgence of the old gloom which had
shrouded my conjectural Madeira — I might be called
upon to pay the price for this surprising gift of
intense colour, light, and luscious heat, for the

180 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
quickening of the blood, as though the tropic air
were a stimulant as well as a narcotic. WelL it does
seem but fair, if chance, being happy, gives you a
place in the tropics, to expect to have less time there
than is given for the job of eking out a meagre exist
ence in the north. It would not be right to look
for gain both ways. (You will have noticed already,
I suppose, that I have not been on the Madeira
fifteen minutes.) This, I thought, as I walked to and
fro on the " Capella," is different from that endurance,
bitter and prolonged, in the land where there is no
sun worth mentioning, where the north-east wind
blows, where the poor rate is so and so in the pound
(and you are one of the fortunate if you pay it), and
Lord Rosebery lectures on Thrift. I mentioned this
to the Doctor. He did not remove his pipe from
his mouth.
Because (the idea dawned on me as I sank into a
deck chair beside the surgeon under the poop awning,
and borrowed his silver tobacco-box), because, as to
thrift and parching winds, abstinence and prudence,
and lectures by the solemn on how to thin out your
life in cold climates where all that is worth having is
annexed, why praise a man who is willing to deprave
his hfe to sand and frost ? There in merry England
the poor wretch is, where the riches of earth are not
broadcast largess as I see they are here, but are
stacked on each side of the road, and guarded by
police, leaving to him but the inclement highway,
with nothing but Lord Rosebery's advice and bene
diction to help him keep the wind out of the holes in
his trousers ; that benefit, and the bleak consideration
that he may swink all day for a handful of beans, or

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 181
go without. What is prudence in that man ? It is
his goodwill for the police. To be blue nosed and
meek at heart, and to hoard half the crust of your
stinted bread, is to blaspheme the King of Glory.
Some men will touch their crowns to Carnegie in
heaven. Thrift and abstinence ! They began to look the
most snivelling of sins as I watched, with spacious
leisure, the near procession of gigantic trees, that
superb wild which did not arise from such niggard
and flinty maxims. Frugality and prudence ! That
is to regard the means to death in fife, the pallor and
projecting bones of a warped existence, as good men
dwell on courage, motherhood, rebellion, and May
time, and the other proofs of vitality and growth.
Now, I thought, I see what to do. All those im
proving lectures, reform leagues, university settle
ments, labour exchanges, and other props for crippled
humanity, are idle. It is a generative idea that is
wanted, a revelation, a vision. It would be easier
and quicker to take regiments of folk out of Ancoats,
Hanley, Bethnal Green, and the cottages of the
countryside, for one long glance at the kind of earth
I see now. The world would expand as they looked.
They would get the dynamic suggestion. In vain,
afterwards, would the monopolists and the superior
persons chant patriotic verse to drown the noise of
chain forging at the Westminster foundry. Not the
least good, that. The folk would not hear. Their
minds would be absent and outward, not locked
within to huddle with cramped and respectful
thoughts. They would not start instinctively at the
word of command. They would begin with dignity

182 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
and assurance to compass their own affairs, and in
an enormous way ; and they would make hardly a
sound as they moved forward, and they would have
uplifted and shining eyes. (" Then you think more
of 'em than I do," said the surgeon.)
It would be no use, I saw clearly, sending the folk
to Algeria, Egypt, or New York. Such places never
betray to the traveller that our world is not a shape
less parcel of fields and buildings, tied up with by
laws, and sealed by the Grand Lama as his last act
in the stupendous work of creation. There it is, an
angular package in the sky, which the sun reads, and
directs on its way to heaven in advance of its limited
syndicate of proprietors.
Here on the Madeira I had a vision instead of the
earth as a great and shining sphere. There were
no fences and private bounds. I saw for the first
time an horizon as an arc suggesting how wide is our
ambit. That bare shoulder of the world effaced
regions and constellations in the sky. Our earth
had celestial magnitude. It was warm, a living
body. The abundant rain was vital, and the forest
I saw, nobler in stature and with an aspect of in
tensity beyond what the Amazon forests showed,
rose like a sign of life triumphant.
You see what that tropical wilderness did for me,
and with but a single glance. Whatever comes after,
I shall never be the same again. The complacent
length of the ship was before us. Amidships were
some of the fellows staring overside, absorbed. Now
and then, when his beat brought him to the port
side, I could see the head of the little pilot on the
bridge. His colleague was sleeping in one of the

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 183
hammocks slung between the stanchions of the poop
awning. The Doctor was scrutinising a pair of
motuca flies which hovered about his ankles, waiting
for him to go to sleep. He wanted them for speci
mens. The Skipper, looking a httle anxious, came
slowly up the poop ladder, crossed over, and stood by
our chairs. " The river is full of big timber," he
said. He went to stare overside, and then came back
to us. " The current is about five knots, and those
trees adrift are as big as barges. I hope they keep
clear of the propeller." The Skipper's eye was un
easy. He was glum with suspicion ; he spoke of
the way his fools might meet the wiles of fortune at
a time when he was below and his ship was without
its acute protective intelligence. He stood, a spare
figure in white, in a limp grass hat with flapping
eaves, gazing forward to the bridge mistrustfully.
He had brought us in a valuable vessel to a place
unknown, and now he had to go on, and afterwards
get us all out again. I began to feel a large respect
for this elderly master mariner (who did not give
the beard of an onion for any man's sympathy) who
had skilfully contrived to put us where we were, and
now was unaware what mischance would send us
to rot under the forest wall, the bottom to fall out
of our adventure just when we were in its narrowest
passage and achievement was almost within view.
" This is no place for a ship," the captain mumbled.
"It isn't right. We're disturbing the mud all the
time ; and look at those butterflies now, dodging
about us ! " He was continuing this monologue as
a dirty cap appeared at the head of the ladder, and
a long and ragged length of sorrowful sailor mounted

184 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
there, and doffed the cap. The Skipper brusquely
signed to him to approach. He was a youngster in
an advanced stage of some trouble, and he had no
English. I tliink he was a Swede. He demonstrated
his sickness, baring his arm, muttering unintelligibly.
The limb, hke his hand, was distorted with large
bhsters. There was his face, too. I mistrusted my
equanimity for some moments, but braced my eyes,
compelling them to be scientific and impersonal. By
signs we gathered he had been sleeping on deck, such
was the heat of the forecastle, and the mosquitoes,
the Doctor said, had poisoned a body already tainted
from the stews of Rotterdam. The corroding spirit
of the jungle was beginning to permeate through
our flaws.
The Doctor went to his surgery. The pilot sat up
in his hammock, glanced indifferently at the sick
sailor, yawning and stretching his arms, his dainty
little brown feet dangling just clear of the deck. He
began to roll a cigarette of something which looked
like tea. Then he dropped out, and went forward
to release his mate on the bridge, and the senior pilot
came up as the Doctor had finished his job. The
junior pilot, a fragile, girlish fellow, rather taciturn,
greets us always with a faintly supercihous smile.
His chief is a round, jolly httle man, hearty, and
lavish with ornamental gestures. We both smiled
involuntarily as he marched across to us, with his
uniform cap, bearing our ships' badge, stuck on the
back of his head with a bias to the right ear. There
is not enough of Portuguese in our ship's company
to serve one conversation adequately, but we get
on well with this pilot, and he with us. He sits in a

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 185
hammock, making pantomime explanatory of Brazil to
us strangers, and we pick him up with alacrity, after
but brief pauses. While the Doctor beguiled him
into dramatic moments, I lay back and watched himv
searching for Brazihan characteristics, to report here.
You know that, when you have returned from a
far country, you are asked unanswerable questions
about its people, and especially about its women.
We are easily flattered by the suggestion that we are
authoritative, with opinions got from uncommon
experience, especially where women with strange
eyes and dark skins are concerned. So, once upon
a time, I caught myself — or rather, I caught that
cold, critical, and impartial part of me, which is a
solemn fake — when answering a question of this kind,
explaining in a comprehensive way the character
of the Brazilian people, as though I were telling of
the objective phenomena of one simple soul. Presently
the wise and ribald part of me woke, caught the
note of that inhuman voice, and raised a derisive
cry, heard by me with grave deprecation, but not
heard at all by my listener. I stopped. For what
do I know of the Brazilian character ? Very httle.
Is there such a thing ? I suppose the true Brazilian
is like the true Englishman, or the typical bird which
is known by its bones, but may be anything from a
crow to a nightingale, but is more likely a lark. You
can imagine the foreigner taking his knowledge of
the British pickpocket who met him at the landing-
stage, the pen-portraits of Bernard Shaw, the Rev.
Jeremiah Hardshell, Father O'Flynn, You, Me,
the cabman who swore at him, his landlady and her
daughter, Lloyd-George, Piccadilly by night, and

186 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
Tom Bowhng, carefully adjusting all that valuable
British data, just as Professor Karl Pearson does his
physical statistics, and explaining the result as the
modern English ; adding, in the usual footnote, what
decadent tendencies are to be deduced, in addition,
from the facts which could not be worked into the
major premises.
Now, there was the handsome Brazilian customs
officer, tall, august, with dark eyes haughty and slow
with thought, the waves of his romantic black hair
faintly traced in silver, who might have been a poet,
or a philosophic revolutionist ; but who was the man,
as the first mate told us (after we had searched every
where for the articles) who " pinched your bloomin'
field-glasses and my meerschaum."
Take, if you like, the ultra-fashionable ladies at
the Para hotel, who looked at us with sleepy eyes,
and who, I suspect, were not Brazilians at all. Sup
posing they were, there must be counted the wife of
the official at Serpa. She came aboard there with
her husband to see an Enghsh ship ; she reminded
me of that picture of the Madonna by Sassoferrato
in the National Gallery ; I am unable to come nearer
to justice to her than that. Again, there was a
certain vain native apothecary, and he had the idea
that I was bottle-washer to the " Capella's " surgeon,
much to that fellow's secret delight. The chemist
treated me with a studied difference in consequence ;
and though our surgeon could have undeceived the
mistaken man, having some Portuguese, he refused
to do so. I remember the pilot who, when he left
us at Serpa, and I bade him farewell, did, before all
our ship's company, embrace me heartily, rest his

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 187
cheek against mine, and make loving noises in his
throat. And there is our present chief guide, now
swinging in his hammock, and looking down upon
us waggishly.
He had not been a pilot always. Once he was a
clown in a circus ; that httle fact is a clue to much
which otherwise would have been obscure in him.
When he boarded us at Serpa to take the place of the
man who shrank from the thought of the Madeira,
the chart-room under the bridge was given to him,
and as the mate put it, " he moved in." He had
bundles, boxes, bags, baskets, a tin trunk, a chair,
a parrot, a hammock, and some pictures. He was
going to be with us for two months, but his affair
had the conclusive character of a migration, a final
severance from his old life. His friends came to see
him depart, and they wound themselves in each
others arms, heads laid in resignation on shoulders.
" Looks as if we're bound for the Golden Shore,"
commented the boatswain.
This little rounded man, the pilot, with his unctuous
olive skin, tiny moustache of black silk, and impudent
eyes, looked ripe in middle age, though actually he
was but thirty. He wore a suit of azure cotton,
ironed faultlessly, and his tunic fitted with hooks
and eyes across his throat. His boots were sulphur
coloured and Parisian. A massive gold ring, which
carried a carbonado nearly as large as the stopper of
a beer bottle, was embedded in a fat finger of his
right hand. In the front of his cap he had sewn the
badge of our line, and he was curiously proud of that
gaudy symbol. He would wear the cap on one ear,
and walk up and down in display, with a lofty smile,

188 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
and a carriage supposed to appertain to a British
officer in a grand moment. He had a great admira
tion for all that was British, except our food. If
you were up at sunrise you could see him at his toilet,
and the spectacle was worth the effort. His array
of toilet vesicles reminded me of the shelves in a
barber's shop. Oiled and fragrant, he took his seat
for breakfast with much formal politeness. He
shook our saloon company into a sense of its re
sponsibilities, for we had grown indifferent as to
dress, and sometimes we had three-day beards. His
handkerchiefs and linen were scented, and dainty
with floral designs. And ours — oh, ours — ! He
took wine at breakfast, and after idling a little with
our foreign dishes he would wipe his mouth on our
tablecloth, and then leave for the bridge. As he
passed across the poop we would hear him hawk
violently, and spit on the deck. Then the Skipper
would glare, and drive his chair backwards in a dark
passion. • •••••
Gazing at the foliage as it unfolded, our pilot named
the paranas, tributaries, and islands, when they
drew abeam. He told us what the trees were ; and
then with head shakes and uplifted hands and eyes,
indicated what grave things were behind that screen
of leaves. (Though I don't suppose he knew.) His
mimicry was so spontaneous and exact that it was
more entertaining and just as instructive as speech.
He taught us how the Indians kill you, and what
some villagers did to a naughty padre, and how the
sucuruju swallows a deer, and how to make love
to a Brazilian girl. He kicked the slippers from his

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 189
little feet, and smuggled into the hammock mesh
for a snooze, waving a hand coyly to us over the
edge of his nest.
The dinner bell rang. Because the saloon is now
hot beyond endurance, the steward has fixed a
table on deck, and so, as we eat, we can see the jungle
pass. That keeps some of our mind from dwelling
over much on the dreary menu. The potatoes have
begun to ferment. The meat is out of tins ; some
times it is served as fritters, sometimes we recognise
it in a hash, and sometimes, shameless, it appears
without dress, a naked and shiny lump straight from
its metal bed. Often the bread is sour. The butter,
too, is out of tins. Feeding is not a joy, but a duty.
But it is soon over. Although everybody now
complains of indigestion, we have far to go yet,
and the cheerfulness which faces all circumstances
brazenly must be our manna. Our table, some deal
planks on trestles, is mellowed by a white tablecloth.
We sit round on boxes. Over head the sun flames
on the awning, making it golden and translucent.
I let the soup pass. The next dish is a hot pot of
tinned mutton and preserved vegetables. Something
must be done, and I do it then. There is some pickled
beef and pickled onions. I watch the forest pass.
Then, for desert, the steward, the hot beads touring
about the mounts of his large pale face, brings along
oleaginous fritters of plum duff. The Doctor leaves.
I follow him to the chairs again, and we exchange
tobacco-boxes and fill our pipes. This may seem to
you unendurable for long. I did not think so, though
of habits so regular and engrained that my chances
of survival, when viewed comparatively, for my

190 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
ship mates were hardened and usually were more
robust, seemed poor enough. But I enjoyed it.
There was nourishment, a tonic stay, in our desire
to greet every onset of the miseries, which now were
camped about us, besieging our souls, with sans
culotte insolence. We called to the Eumenides with
mockery. Like Thoreau, I believe I could live on a
tenpenny nail, if it comes to that.
There is no doubt the forest influences our moods
in a way you at home could not understand. Our
minds take its light and shade, and just as our little
company, gathered in the Chief's room at a time when
the seas were running high, recalled sombre legends
which told of foredoom, so this forest, an intrusive
presence which is with us morning, noon, and night,
voiceless, or making such sounds as we know are not
for our ears, now shadows us, the prescience of
destiny, as though an eyeless mask sat at table with
us, a being which could tell us what we would know,
but though it stays, makes no sign.
This forest, since we entered the Para River, now
a thousand miles away, has not ceased. There have
been the clearings of the settlements from Para in
wards ; but as Spruce says in his Journal, those
clearings and campos alter the forest of the Amazon
no more than would the culling of a few weeds alter
the aspect of an Enghsh cornfield. The few openings
I have seen in the forest do not derange my clear
consciousness of a limitless ocean of leaves, its deep
billows of foliage rolling down to the only paths there
are in this country, the rivers, and there overhanging,
arrested in collapse. There is no land. One must
travel by boat from one settlement to another. The

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 191
settlements are but islands, narrow footholds, widely
sundered by vast gulfs of jungle.
The forest of the Amazons is not merely trees and
shrubs. It is not land. It is another element. Its
inhabitants are arborean ; they have been fashioned
for hfe in that medium as fishes to the sea and birds
to the air. Its green apparition is persistent, as the
sky is and the ocean. In months of travel it is the
horizon which the traveller cannot reach, and its
unchanging surface, merged through distance into a
mere reflector of the day, a brightness or a gloom, in
his immediate vicinity breaks into a complexity of
green surges ; then one day the voyager sees land at
last and is released from it. But we have not seen
land since Serpa. There are men whose lives are
spent in the chasms of light where the rivers are sunk
in the dominant element, but who never venture
within its green surface, just as one would not go
beneath the waves to walk in the twilight of the sea
bottom. Now I have been watching it for so long I see
the outer aspect of the jungle does vary. When
I saw it first on the Para River it appeared to my
wondering eyes but featureless green cliffs. Then in
the Narrows beyond Para I remember an impression
of elegance and placidity, for there, the waters still
being tidal and saline, the palms were conspicuous
and in profuse abundance. The great palms are the
chief feature of that forest elevation, with their
graceful columns, and their generous and symmetrical
fronds which sometimes are like gigantic green
feathers, and again are like fans. A tall palm, what
ever its species, being a definite expression of life —

192 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
not an agglomeration of leaves, but body and crown,
a regal personahty — the forest of the Narrows,
populous with such exquisite beings, had marges of
straight ascending lines and flourishing and geo
metrical crests.
Beyond the river Xingu, on the main stream, the
forest, persistent as a presence, again changed its
aspect. It was ragged and shapeless, an impene
trable tangle, its front strewn with fallen trees, the
vision of outer desolation. By Obydos it was more
aerial and shapely again, but not of that light and
soaring grace of the Narrows. It was contained, yet
mounted not in straight lines, as in the country of
the palms, but in convex masses. Here on the lower
Madeira the forest seems of a nature intermediate
between the rolling structure of the growth by Obydos,
and the grace of the palm groves in the estuarine
region of the Narrows. It is barbaric and splendid,
easily prodigal with illimitable riches, sinking the
river beneath a wealth of forms.
On the Madeira, as elsewhere in the world of the
Amazons, some of the forest is on " terra-firma," as
that land is called which is not flooded when the
waters rise. There the trees reach their greatest
altitude and diameter ; it is the region of the caa-
apoam, the " great woods " of the Indians. A
stretch of terra firma shows as a low, vertical bank
of clay, a narrow ribbon of yellow earth dividing the
water from the jungle. More rarely the river cuts
a section through some undulating heights of red
conglomerate — heights I call these cliffs, as heights
they are in this flat country, though at home they
would attract no more attention than would the side

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 193
of a gravel-pit — and again the bank may be of that
cherry and saffron clay which gives a name to Ita-
coatiara. On such land the forest of the Madeira is
immense, three or four species among the greater
trees lording it in the green tumult expansively,
always conspicuous where they stand, their huge
boles showing in the verdant facade of the jungle as
grey and brown pilasters, their crowns rising above
the level roof of the forest in definite cupolas. There
is one, having a neat and compact dome and a grey,
smooth, and rounded trunk, and dense foliage as
dark as that of the holm oak ; and another, resembling
it, but with a flattened and somewhat disrupted
dome. I guessed these two giants to be silk-cottons.
Another, which I supposed to be of the leguminous
order, had a silvery bole, and a texture of pale green
leafage open and light, which at a distance resembled
that of the birch. These three trees, when assembled
and well grown, made most stately riverside groups.
The trunks were smooth and bare till somewhere
near ninety feet from the ground. Palms were inter
mediate, filling the spaces between them, but the
palms stood under the exogens, growing in alcoves
of the mass, rising no higher than the beginning of
the branches and foliage of their lords. The whole
overhanging superstructure of the forest — not a
window, an inlet, anywhere there — was rolling clouds
of leaves from the lower rims of which vines were
catenary, looping from one green cloud to another,
or pendent, hke the sundered cordage of a ship's
rigging. Two other trees were frequent, the pao
mulatto, with hmbs so dark as to look black, and the
castanheiro, the Brazil nut tree.

194 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
The roof of the woods lowered when we were
steaming past the igapo. The igapo, or aqueous
jungle, through which the waters go deeply for some
months of the year, is of a different character, and
perhaps of a lesser height — it seems less ; but then it
grows on lower ground. I was told to note that its
foliage is of a lighter green, but I cannot say I saw
that. It is in the igapo that the Hevea Brazihensis
flourishes, its pale bole, suggestive of the white
poplar, deep in water for much of the year, and its
crown sheltered by its greater neighbours, so that it
grows in a still, heated, and humid twihght. This
low ground is always marked by growths of small
cecropia trees. These, with their white stems, their
habit of free and regular branching, and their long
leaves, digital in the manner of the horse-chestnut,
have the appearane of great candelabra. Sometimes
the igapo is prefaced by an area of cane. The number
less islands, being of recent formation, have a forest
of a different nature, and they seldom carry the larger
trees. The upper ends of many of the islands termi
nate in sandy pits, where dwarf willows grow. So
foreign was the rest of the vegetation, that notwith
standing its volume and intricacy I detected those
humble httle willows at once, as one would start sur
prised at an English word heard in the meaningless
uproar of an alien multitude.
The forest absorbed us ; as one's attention would
be challenged and drawn by the casual regard, never
noticeably direct, but never withdrawn, of a being
superior and mysterious, so I was drawn to watch
the still and intent stature of the jungle, waiting for
it to become vocal, for some relaxing of its static

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 195
form. Nothing ever happened. I never discovered
it. Rigid, watchful, enigmatic, its presence was
constant, but without so much as one blossom in all
its green vacuity to show the least friendly familiarity
to one who had found flowers and woodlands kind.
It had nothing that I knew. It remained securely
aloof and indifferent, till I thought hostility was
implied, as the sea implies its impartial hostility,
in a constant presence which experience could not
fathom, nor interest soften, nor courage intimidate.
We sank gradually deeper inwards towards its central
fastnesses. By noon on our first day on the Madeira we reached
the village of Rozarinho, which is on the left bank,
with the tributary of the same name a little more up
stream, but entering from the other side. Here, as
we followed a loop of the stream, the Madeira seemed
circumscribed, a tranquil lake. The yellow water,
though swift, had so pohshed a surface that the
reflections of the forest were hardly disturbed, sinking
below the tops of the inverted trees to the ultimate
clouds, giving an illusion of profundity to the apparent
lake. The village was but a handful of leaf huts
grouped about the nucleus of one or two larger build
ings with white walls. There was the usual jetty of a
few planks to which some canoes were tied. The
forest was a high background to those diminished
huts ; the latter, as we came upon them, suddenly
increased the height of the trees.
In another place the shelter of a family of Indians
was at the top of a bank, secretive within the base of
the woods. A row of chocolate babies stood outside
that nest, with four jabiru storks among them. Each

196 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
bird, so much taller than the babies, stood resting
meditatively on one leg, as though waiting the order
to take up an infant and deliver it somewhere.
None of them, storks or infants, took the least notice
of us. Perhaps the time had not yet come for them
to be aware of mundane things. Certainly I had a
feeling myself, so strange was the place, and quiet
and tranquil the day, that we had passed world's end,
and that what we saw beyond our steamer was the
coloured stuff of dreams which, if a wind blew, would
wreathe and clear ; vanish, and leave a shining void.
The sunset deepened this apprehension. There came
a wonderful sky of orange and mauve. It was over
us and came down and under the ship. We moved
with glowing clouds beneath our keel. There was no
river ; the forest girdled the radiant interior of a
hollow sphere.
The pilots could not proceed at night. Shortly
after sundown we anchored, in nine fathoms. The
trees were not many yards from the steamer. When
the ship was at rest a canoe with two Indians
came alongside, with a basket of guavas. They
were shy fellows, and each carried in his hand a
bright machete, for they did not seem quite sure of
our company. After tea we sat about the poop,
trying to smoke, and, in the case of the Doctor and
the Purser, wearing at the same time veils of butterfly
nets, as protection from the mosquito swarms. The
netting was put over the helmet, and tucked into
the neck of the tunic. Yet, when I poked the stem
of the pipe, which carried the gauze with it, into my
mouth, the veil was drawn tight on the face. A
mosquito jumped to the opportunity, and arrived.

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 197
Alongside, the frogs were making the deafening
clangour of an iron foundry, and through that sound
shrilled the cicadas. I listened for the first time to
the din of a tropical night in the forest. There is no
word strong enough to convey this uproar to ears
which have not listened to it.
Jan. 24. A bright still sunrise, promising heat ;
and before breakfast the ship's ironwork was too hot
to touch. The novelty of this Madeira is already
beginning to merge into the yellow of the river, the
blue of the sky, and the green of the jungle, with
but the occasional variation of low roseous cliffs.
The average width of the river may be less than a
quarter of a mile. It is loaded with floating timber,
launched upon it by " terras-cabidas," landslides,
caused by the rains, which carry away sections of
the forest each large enough to furnish an English
park with trees. Sometimes we see a bight in the
bank where such a collapse has only recently occurred,
the wreckage of trees being still fresh. Many of the
trees which charge down on the current are of great
bulk, with half their table-like base high out of the
water. Occasionally rafts of them appear, locked
with creepers, and bearing flourishing gardens of
weeds. This characteristic gives the river its Por
tuguese name, " river of wood." The Indians know
the Madeira as the Cayary, " white river."
Its course to-day serpentines so freely that at
times we steer almost east, and then again go west.
Our general direction is south-west. At eight this
morning, after some anxious moments when the
river was dangerous with reefs, we passed the village

198 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
of Borba, 140 miles from Serpa. Here there is a
considerable clearing, with kine browsing over a
hummocky sward that is well above the river on
an occurrence of the red clay. This release of the
eyes was a smooth and grateful experience after
the enclosing walls. Some steps dug in the face of
the low cliff led to the white houses, all roofed with
red tiles. The village faced the river. From each
house ascended the leisurely smoke of early morning.
The church was in the midst of the houses, its bell
conspicuous with verdigris. Two men stood to
watch us pass. It was a pleasant assurance to have,
those roofs and the steeple rising actually into the
light of the sky. The dominant forest, in which
we were sunk, was here definitely put down by our
fellow-men. We were beyond Borba, and its parana and island
just above it, before the pilot had finished telling us,
where we watched from the " Capella's " bridge, that
Borba was a settlement which had suffered much
from attacks of the Araras Indians. The river took
a sharp turn to the east, and again went west. Islands
were numerous. These islands are lancet-shaped,
and he along the banks, separated by side channels,
their paranas, from the land. The smaller river
craft often take a parana instead of the main stream,
to avoid the rush of the current. The whole region
seems lifeless. There is never a flower to be seen,
and rarely a bird. Sometimes, though, we disturb
the snowy heron. On one sandy island, passed
during the afternoon, and called appropriately, Ilho
do Jacare, we saw two alligators. Otherwise we
have the silent river to ourselves ; though I am for-

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 199
getting the butterflies, and the constant arrival
aboard of new winged shapes which are sometimes
so large and grotesque that one is uncertain about
their aggressive qualities. As we idle on the poop
we keep by us two insect nets, and a killing-bottle.
The Doctor is making a collection, and I am supposed
to assist.
When I came on deck on the morning of our
arrival in the Brazils it was not the orange sunrise
behind a forest which was topped by a black design
of palm fronds, nor the warm odour of the place,
nor the height and intensity of the vegetation, which
was most remarkable to me, a new-comer from the
restricted north. It was a butterfly which flickered
across our steamer hke a coloured flame. No other
experience put England so remote.
A superb butterfly, too bright and quick to be
anything but an escape from Paradise, will stay its
dancing flight, as though with intelligent surprise
at our presence, hover as if puzzled, and swoop to
inspect us, alighting on some such incongruous
piece of our furniture as a coil of rope, or the cook's
refuse pail, pulsing its wings there, plainly nothing
to do with us, the prismatic image of joy. Out
always rush some of our men at it, as though the
sight of it had maddened them, as would a revela
tion of accessible riches. It moves only at the last
moment, abruptly and insolently. They are left to
gape at its mocking retreat. It goes in erratic
flashes to the wall of trees and then soars over the
parapet, hope at large.
Then there are the other things which, so far as
most of us know, have no names, though a sailor,

200 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
wringing his hands in anguish, is usually ready with
a name. To-day we had such a visitor. He looked
a fellow the Doctor might require, so I marked him
down when he settled near a hatch on the after-deck.
He was a bee the size of a walnut, and habited in
dark blue velvet. In this land it is wise to assume
that everything bites or stings, and that when a
creature looks dead it is only carefully watching you.
I clapped the net over that fellow and instantly he
appeared most dead. Knowing he was but sham
ming, and that he would give me no assistance, I
stood wondering what I could do next ; then the
cook came along. The cook saw the situation,
laughed at my timidity with tropical forms, went
down on his knees, and caught my prisoner. The
cook raised a piercing cry.
On the bridge I saw them levelling their glasses
at us ; and some engineers came to their cabin doors
to see us where we stood on the lonely deck, the
cook and the Purser, in a tableau of poignant tragedy.
The cook walked round and round, nursing his
suffering member, and I did not catch all he said,
for I know very httle Dutch ; but the spirit of it was
familiar, and his thumb was bleeding badly. The
bee had resumed death again. The state of the cook's
thumb was a surprise till the surgeon exhibited the
bee's weapons, when it became clear that thumbs,
especially when Dutch and rosy, hke our cook's,
afforded the right medium for an artist who worked
with such mandibles, and a tail that was a stiletto.
In England the forms of insect life soon become
familiar. There is the housefly, the lesser cabbage
white butterfly, and one or two other httle things.

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 201
In the Brazils, though the great host of forms is
surprising enough, it is the variety in that host which
is more surprising still. Any bright day on the
" Capella " you may walk the length of the ship,
carrying a net and a collecting-bottle, and fill the
bottle (butterflies, cockroaches, and bugs not ad
mitted), and perhaps have not three of a species.
The men frequently bring us something buzzing in a
hat ; though accidents do happen half-way to where
the Doctor is sitting, and the specimen is mangled in
a frenzy. A hornet came to us that way. He was
in violet armour, as hard as a crab, was still stabbing
the air with his long needle, and working on a frag
ment of hat he held in his jaws. But such knights
in mail are really harmless, for after all they need
not be interfered with. It is the insignificant little
fellows whose object in life it is to interfere with us
which really make the difference.
So far on the river we have not met the famous
pium fly. But the motuca fly is a nuisance during
the afternoon sleep. It is nearly of the size and
appearance of a " blue-bottle " fly, but its wings,
having black tips, look as though their ends were cut
off. The motucas, while we slept, would alight on
the wrists and ankles, and where each had fed there
would be a wound from which the blood steadily
trickled. The mosquitos do not trouble us till sundown.
But one morning in my cabin I was interested in the
hovering of what I thought was a small, leggy spider
which, because of its colouration of black and grey
bands, was evasive to the sight as it drifted about on
its invisible thread. At last I caught it, and found

202 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
it was a new mosquito. In pursuing it I found a
number of them in the cabin. When I exhibited
the insect to the surgeon he did not well disguise
his concern. " Say nothing about it," he said, " but
this is the yellow-fever brute." So our interest in our
new hfe is kept alert and bright. The solid teak
doors of our cabins are now permanently fixed
back. Shutting them would mean suffocation ; but
as the cabins must be closed before sundown to
keep out the clouds of gnats, the carpenter has
made wooden frames, covered with copper gauze,
to fit the door openings at night, and rounds of
gauze to cap the open ports ; and with a damp
cloth, and some careful hunting each morning, one
is able to keep down the mosquitos which have
managed to find entry during the night and have
retired at sunrise to rest in dark corners. For our
care notwithstanding the insects do find their way
in to assault our lighted lamps. The Chief, partly
because as an old sailor he is a fatalist, and partly
because he thinks his massive body must be invulner
able, and partly because he has a contempt, anyway,
for protecting himself, each morning has a new
collection of curios, alive and dead, littered about
bis room. (I do not wonder Bates remained in this
land so long ; it is Elysium for the entomologist.)
One of the live creatures found in his room the Chief
retains and cherishes, and hopes to tame, though
the object does not yet answer to his name of Edwin.
This creature is a green mantis or praying insect,
about four inches long, which the Chief came upon
where it rested on the copper gauze of his door-cover,
holding a fly in its hands, and eating it as one would

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 203
an apple. This mantis is an entertaining freak,
and can easily keep an audience watching it for an
hour, if the day is dull. Edwin, in colour and form,
is as fresh, fragile, and translucent as a leaf in spring.
He has a long thin neck — the stalk to his wings, as
it were — which is quite a third of his length. He
has a calm, human face with a pointed chin at the
end of his neck ; he turns his face to gaze at you
without moving his body, just as a man looks back
wards over bis shoulder. This uncanny mimicry
makes the Chief shake with mirth. Then, if you
alarm Edwin, he springs round to face you, frilhng
his wings abroad, standing up and sparring with his
long arms, which have hooks at their ends. At other
times he will remain still, with his hands clasped up
before bis face, as though in earnest devotion, for a
trying period. If a fly alights near him he turns
his face that way and regards it attentively. Then
sluggishly he approaches it for closer scrutiny.
Having satisfied himself it is a good fly, without
warning his arms shoot out and that fly is hopelessly
caught in the hooked hands. He eats it, I repeat,
as you do apples, and the authentic mouthfuls of fly
can be seen passing down his glassy neck. Edwin is
fragile as a new leaf in form, has the same dehcate
colour, and has fascinating ways ; but somehow he
gives an observer the uncomfortable thought that
the means to existence on this earth, though intri
cately and wonderfully devised, might have been
managed differently. Edwin, who seems but a pretty
fragment of vegetation, is what we call a lie. His
very existence rests on the fact that he is a diabo
lical he.

204 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
Gossamers in the rigging to-day led the captain to
prophesy a storm before night. Clouds of an indigo
darkness, of immense bulk, and motionless, reduced
the sunset to mere runnels of opaline light about
the bases of dark mountains inverted in the heavens.
There was a rapid fall of temperature, but no rain.
Our world, and we in its centre on the "Capella,"
waited for the storm in an expectant hush. Night fell
while we waited. The smooth river again deepened
into the nadir of the laft of day, and the forest about
us changed to material ramparts of cobalt. The pilot
made preparations to anchor. The engine bell rang
to stand-by, a summons of familiar urgency, but with
a new and alarming note when heard in a place fike
that. The forest made no response. A little later
the bell clanged rapidly again, and the pulse of our
steamer slowed, ceased. We could hear the water
uncoiling along our plates. The forest itself
approached us, came perilously near. The Skipper's
voice cried abruptly, " Let go ! " and at once the
virgin silence was demolished by the uproar of our
cable. The " Capella " throbbed violently ; she
literally undulated in the drag of the current. We
still drifted slowly down stream. The second anchor
was dropped, and held us. The silence closed in on
us instantly. Far in the forest somewhere, while we
were whispering to each other in the quiet, a tree fell
with a deep, significant boom.
Jan. 25. We had been under way for more than
an hour when my eyes opened on the illuminated
panorama of leaves and boles unfolding past the
door of my cabin. The cicadas were grinding their

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 205
scissors loudly in the trees alongside. I spent much
of this day on the bridge, where I liked to be, watch
ing the pilot at work. The Skipper was there, and
in a cantankerous mood. The pilot wants us to
make a chart of the river. He has given the captain
and me a long list of islands, paranas, tributaries,
villages, and sitios. Every map and reference to the
river we have on board is valueless. A map of the
river indicates many settlements with beautiful
names ; and at each point, when we arrive, nothing
but the forest shows. How the cartographers arrived
at such results is a mystery. This river, which their
generous imaginings have seen as a tortuous bough
of the Amazon, laden with villages which they
indicate on their maps with marks hke httle round
fruits, is almost barren. Every day we pass small
sitios or clearings ; maybe the map-makers mean
such places as those. Yet each clearing is but a
brief security, a raft of land — the size of the garden
of an Enghsh villa — lonely in an ocean of deep leaves,
where a rubber man has built himself a timber house,
and some huts for his serfs. It will have a jetty and
a huddle of canoes, and usually a few children on
the bank watching us. We salute that place with
our syren as we pass, and sometimes the kiddies
spring for home then as though we were shooting at
them. Or we see a little embowered shack with a
pile of fuel logs beside it, and a crude name-board,
where the river boats replenish when traversing
this stream, during the season, for rubber. Our
pilots have much to say of these stations, and of all
the rubber men on the river and their wealth. But
away with their rubber ! I am tired of it, and will

206 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
keep it out of this book if I can. For it is blasphemous
that in such a potentially opulent land the juice of
one of its wild trees should be dwelt upon — as it is
in the states of Amazonas and Para — as though it
were the sole act of Providence. The Brazilians
can see nothing here but rubber. The generative
qualities of this land through fierce sun and warm
showers — for rarely a day passes without rain,
whatever the season — a land of constant high
summer with a free fecundity which has buried
the earth everywhere under a wild growth nearly
two hundred feet deep, is insignificant to them.
They see nothing in it at all but the damnable com
modity which is its ruin. Para is mainly rubber,
and Manaos. The Amazon is rubber, and most of
its tributaries. The Madeira particularly is rubber.
The whole system of communication, which covers
34,000 miles of navigable waters, waters nourishing
a humus which literally stirs beneath your feet with
the movements of spores and seeds, that system
would collapse but for the rubber. The passengers
on the river boats are rubber men, and the cargoes
are rubber. All the talk is of rubber. There are no
manufactures, no agriculture, no fisheries, and no
saw-mills, in a region which could feed, clothe, and
shelter the population of a continent. There was a
book by a Brazilian I saw at Para, recently pubhshed,
and called the " Green Hell " (Inferno Verde). On its
cover was the picture of a nude Indian woman, sym
bolical of Amazonas, and from wounds in her body
her blood was draining into the little tin cups which
the rubber collector uses against the incisions on the
rubber tree. From what I heard of the subject,

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 207
and I heard much, that picture was little overdrawn.
I begin to think the usual commercial mind is the most
dull, wasteful, and ignorant of all the sad wonders in
the pageant of humanity.
It is only on the " Capella's " bridge that you feel
the stagnant air which is upset by the steamer's
progress. There it spills over us, heavy with the
scent of the lairage on the fore deck. The bridge is
a narrow, elevated outlook, full in the sun's eye,
where I can get a view of the complete ship as she
serpentines in her narrow Way. On the port side
of it the Skipper has a seat, and there now he sits all
day, gazing moodily ahead. The dapper httle pilot
stands centrally, throwing brief commands over his
shoulder into the open window of the wheel-house,
where a sailor, gravely chewing tobacco, bis hands
on the wheel, is as rapt as though in a trance. I
think the pilot finds his way by divination. The
depth of the river is most variable. In the dry
season I hear the stream becomes but a chain of
pools connected by threads which may be no more
than eighteen inches deep, the rest of its bed being
dry mud cross-hatched by sun cracks. The rains
in far Bohvia, overflowing the swamps there, during
some months of the year increase the depth of the
Madeira by forty-five feet. The local rainy season
would make hardly any difference to it. The river
is fed from reservoirs which stretch beneath the Andes.
There is rarely anything to show why, for a spell,
the pilot should take us straight ahead in mid
stream, and then again tack to and fro across^ some
times brushing the fohage with our shrouds. I have
plucked a bunch of leaves in an unexpected -swoop

208 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
inshore. And the big timber comes down afloat to
meet us in a never-ending procession ; there are the
propellor blades to be thought of. I see, now and
then, the swirls which betray rocks in hiding, and
when dodging those dangerous places the screw
disturbs the mud and the stinks. But the pilot
takes us round and about, we with our 300 feet of
length and 23 feet draught, as a man would steer
a motor car. To aid it our rudder has had fixed to
it a false wooden length. The " Capella " is a very
good girl, as responsive to the pilot's word as though
she knew that he alone can save her. She stems
this powerful current at but four knots, and sometimes
we come to places where, if she hesitated for but two
seconds, we should be put athwart stream to close the
channel. And what would happen to us with nothing
but unexplored malarial forest each side of us is not
useful to brood on. Occasionally the pilot, grasping
the top of the " dodger," stares beyond us fixedly
to where the refracted sunshine is blinding between
the green cliffs, and gives quick and numerous orders
to the wheelhouse without turning his head. The
Skipper gets up to watch. The " Capella " makes
surprising swerves, the pilot nervously taps the
boards with his foot. . . . Then he says something
quietly, relaxes, and comes to us blithely, the funny
dog with a nonsense story, and the Skipper sinks
couchant again. Once more I watch the front of
the jungle for what may show there. Seldom there
is anything new which shows. It is rare, even when
close alongside, that one can trace the shape of a
leaf. There are but the conspicuous grey nests of the
ants and wasps. Yet several times to-day I saw

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 209
trees in blossom ; domes of lilac in the green forest
roof. Again, to-day we put up a flight of hundreds
of ducks ; and another incident was a black-water
stream, the Rio Mataua, the line of demarcation
between the Madeira's yellow flood and its dark
tributary being distinct.
Jan. 26. The forest is lower and more open, and
the pao mulatto is more numerous. We saw the
important village of Manicore to-day, and Oncas,
a httle place within a portico of the woods which
was veiled in grey smoke, for they were coagulating
rubber there. For awhile before sunset the sky
was scenic with great clouds, and glowing with the
usual bright colours. The wilderness was trans
formed. Each evening we seem to anchor in a region
different, in nature and appearance, under these
extraordinary sunset skies, from the country we
have been travelling since daylight. Transfiguration
at eventime we know in England. Yet sunset there
but exalts our homeland till it seems more intimately
ours than ever, as though then came a luminous
revelation of its rare intrinsic goodness. We see,
for some brief moments, its aura. But this tropical
jungle, at day-fall, is not the earth we know. It is a
celestial vision, beyond physical attaining, beyond
knowledge. It is ulterior, glorious, transient, fading
before our surprise and wonder fade. We of the
" Capella " are its only witnesses, except those pale
ghosts, the egrets about the dim aqueous base of the
forest. Darkness comes quickly, the swoop and overspread
of black wings. The stopping of the ship's heart,

210 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
because the pulsations of her body have had un
conscious response in yeairs, as by an incorporeal
ligament, is the cessation of your own life. At a
moment there is a strange quiet, in which you begin
to hear the whisper of inanimate things. A log
glides past making faint labial sounds. You are
suddenly released from prison, and float lightly in an
ether impalpable to the coarse sounds and movements
of earth, but which is yet sensitive to the most
dehcate contact of your thoughts and emotions. The
whispering of your fellows is but the rustling of their
thoughts in an ilhmitable and inviolate silence.
Then, almost imperceptibly, the frogs begin their
nightlong din. The crickets and cicadas join. Be
tween the varying pitch of their voices come other
nocturnes in monotones from creatures unknown to
complete the gamut. There are notes so profound,
but constant, that they are a mere impression of
obscurity to the hearing, as when one peers listening
into an abysm in which no bottom is seen, and others
are stridulations so attenuated that they shrill
beyond reach.
A few frogs begin it. There are ululations, wells of
mellow sound bubbling to overflow in the dark, and
they multiply and unite till the quality of the sound,
subdued and pleasant at first, is quite changed. It
becomes monstrous. The night trembles in the
powerful beat of a rhythmic clangour. One cannot
think of frogs, hearing that metallic din. At one
time, soon after it begins, the chorus seems the far
hubbub, mingled and levelled by distance, of a
multitude of people running and disputing in a
place where we who are listening know that no people

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 211
are. The noise comes nearer and louder till it is
palpitating around us. It might be the fife of the
forest, immobile and silent all day, now released and
beating upwards in deafening paroxysms.
Alongside the engine room casing amidships the
engineers have fixed an open-air mess-table, with a
hurricane lamp in its midst, having but a brief halo
of light which hardly distinguishes the pickle jar
from the marmalade pot. A haze of mosquitos
quivers round the light. The air is hot and lazy, and
the engineers sit about limply in trousers and shirts,
the latter open and showing bosoms as various as
faces. The men cheer themselves with comical
plaints about the heat, the food, the Brazils, and
make sudden dabs at bare flesh when the insects
bite them. The Chief rallies his boys as would a
cheery dad — Sandy, though, is nearly his own age,
but still much of a lad, quietly despondent — and
the Chief heartily insists on food, like it or lump it.
I go forward to the captain's tea table on the poop
deck, where we have two hurricane lamps, and where
the figures of us round the table, in that dismal glim,
are the thin phantoms of men. The lamps have
been lighted only that moment, and as we take our
seats, the insects come. Just as sharply as though
something derisive and invisible were throwing them
at us, big mole crickets bounce into our plates. A
cicada, though I was then unaware of his identity,
a monstrous fly which looked as large as a rat, and
with a head like a lantern, alighted before me on the
cloth, and remained still. Picking it up tentatively
it sprang a startling police rattle between my finger
and thumb, and the other chaps shouted their merri-

212 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
ment. The steward places a cup of tea before each
of us, and in an interval of the talk the Skipper
announces a smell of paraffin in his cup. We ex
periment with ours, and gravely confirm. The
surgeon, bending close to a hght with his cup, the
deep characteristics of his face strongly accentuated
— he seems but a bodiless head in the dark — says he
detects globules of fat. The Skipper crudely outlines
this horror to the steward, who makes an inaudible
reply in German, and disappears down the companion.
We get a new and innocent brew.
There is hash for us. There is our familiar the
pickled beef. There are saucers of brown onions.
There are saucers of jam and of butter. To-night
the steward has baked some cakes, and their grateful
smell and crisp brown rugged surface, studded with
plums, determine in my mind a resolution to eat
four of them, if I can get them without open shame.
I assert that our Skipper has a counting eye for the
special dishes ; though you may eat all the hash you
want. Damn his hash ! The bread is sour. I want
cakes. After tea the pilots get into their hammocks and
under their curtains, out of the way of the mosquitos.
We know where they are because of the red ends of
their cigarettes. We sit around anywhere, the
Skipper, the Chief, the Doctor and the Purser. There
is little to be said. We talk of the mosquitos, in
ejaculations, for the httle wretches quite easily
penetrate linen, and can manage even worsted socks.
Occasionally flying insects bump into the tin lamp
placed above us on the ice chest. (No ; there is no
ice.) Thin divergent arrows of light, the fireflies,

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 213
lace the gloom, and the trees alongside are gemmed
with them. We find still less to say to each other,
but fear to retire to our heated berths, for as it is
just possible to breathe in the open we continue to
defy the mosquitos. The first mate serenades us
on his accordion. At last there is no help for it.
The steward comes to tell the master that his cot is
ready. The " old man " sleeps in a cot draped with
netting, and slung from the awning beams on the
starboard side. Nightly he turns in there, and un
failingly a rain cloud bursts in the very early morning,
pounding on the awning till the cool spray compels
him, and he retreats in his pyjamas for shelter,
taking his pillow with him. It is for that reason I do
not use the cot he made for me, which hangs on the
port side ; though it is delightful for the afternoon
nap. The Skipper disappears. The Doctor and I go
below to the surgery, and from the settee there he
removes books, tobacco tins, fishing tackle, phials,
india rubber tubing, and small leather cases, making
room for us both, and first we have some out of his
bottle, and then we try some out of mine. The stuff
is always tepid, for the water in the carafe has a
temperature of 80 degrees. The perspiration begins
a steady permeation as we talk, for now we can talk,
and talk, being together, and talking is better than
sleep, which at its best is but a fitful doze in the
tropics. We fall, as it were, on each other's necks.
Though the Doctor's breast — I say nothing of mine —
is not one which appears to invite the weak tear of a
fellow mortal who is harassed by solitude. You
might judge it too cold, too hard and unresponsive

214 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
a support, for that ; and I have seen his eye even
repellent. He is not elderly, but he is grey, and
palhd through too much of the tropics. The fines
descending his face show he has been observing things
for long, and does not think much of them. When
disputing with him, he does not always reply to you ;
he smiles to himself ; a habit which is an annoyance
to some people, whose simple minds are suspicious,
and who are unaware that the surgeon is sometimes
forgetful that his weaker brethren, when they are
most heated and disputative with him, then most lack
confidence in their case, and need the confirmation of
the wit they know is superior. That is no time when
one should look at the wall, and smile quietly. The
" Capella's " company feel that the surgeon stands
where he overlooks them, and they see, where he
stands unassumingly superior, that he looks upon
them pohtely. They do not know he is really sad
and forgetful ; they think he is amused, but that
he prefers to pretend he is well bred. I must confess
it is known he has prescience having a certain devilish
quality of penetration. There was one of our stokers,
and one night he was drunk on stolen gin, and lati-
tudinous, and so attempted a curious answer to the
second engineer, who sought him out in the fore
castle concerning work. Now the second engineer
is a young man who has a number of photographs
of himself which display him, clad but in vanity and
shorts, back, front, and profile, arms folded tightly
to swell his very large muscles. He has really a
model figure, and he knows it. The cut over the
stoker's nose was a bad one.
To the surgeon the stoker went, early next morning,

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 215
actually for a hair of the dog, but with a story that
he was then to go on duty, and so would miss his
ration of quinine, which is not served till eleven
o'clock. The quinine, as you know, is given in gin.
The surgeon complimented the man on such proper
attention to his health, and willingly gave him the
quinine — in water. He also stood at the door of the
alleyway to watch the man retained the quinine as
far as the engine room entrance.
Eight bells ! Presently I also must go and pretend
to sleep. The surgeon's last cheery comment on
the cosmic scheme remains but as a wry smile on our
faces. We grope in our minds desperately for a
topic to keep the talk afloat. There goes one bell !
I arrive at my haunt of cockroaches, where the
second mate is already asleep on the upper shelf.
The brown hght of the oil lamp has its familiar
flavour, and the cabin is like an oven. What
a prospect for sleep ! Raising the mosquito curtain
carefully I slip through the opening hke an acrobat,
hoping to be ahead of the insidious httle malaria
carriers. A drove of cockroaches scuttles wildly
over my warm mattress as I arrive. Striking matches
within what the sailor overhead calls my meat safe,
I examine my enclosure carefully for msoquitos, but
none seems to be there, though I know very well I
shall find at least a dozen, gorged with blood, in the
morning. The" iron bulkhead which separates my
bed from the engine room is, of course, hot to the
touch. The air is a passive weight. The old in
sect bites begin to irritate and burn. I kick the
miserable sheet to the foot, and lie on my back
without a movement, for I fear I may suffocate in

216 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
that shut box. My chest seems in bonds, and for
long there is no relief, though the body presently
grows indifferent to the misery, and the anxiety
goes. It is remarkable to what brutality the body
will submit, when it knows it must. Yet nothing
but a continuous effort of will kept the panic sup
pressed, and me in that box, till the feehng of anxiety
had passed. Thenceforward the sleepless mind, hke
a petty balloon giddy on a thin but unbreakable
thread of thought, would tug at my consciousness,
revolving and dodging about, in spite of my resolution
to keep it still. If I could only break that thread,
I said to myself, turning over again, away it would
fly out of sight, and I should forget all this . . .all
this . . . And presently it broke loose, and dwindled
into oblivion.
Then I knew nothing more till I saw, fixed where
I was in hopeless horror, the baby face of one I dwell
much upon, in moments of solitude, and it had fallen
wan and thin, and was full of woe unutterable, and
its appealing eyes were blind. I woke with a cry,
sitting up suddenly, the heart going hke a rapid
hammer. There was the curtained box about me.
The clothes were on the hooks. I could see the
black shape of the cabin doorway. By my watch
it was four o'clock. The air had cooled, and as I sat
waiting for the next thing in the silence the mate
snored profoundly overhead. Ah ! So that was all
right. • •••*•
Jan. 27. This has been a day of anxious naviga
tion, for the river has had frequent reefs. We remain
in a stagnant chasm of trees. The surgeon and I,

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 217
accompanied by a swarm of flies, went forward into
the cattle stew this morning to see how the beasts
fared. The patient brutes were suffering badly, and
some, quite plainly, were dying. The change from
the lush green stuff of the Itacoatiara swamps to
compressed American hay put under their noses on
an iron deck, and the stifling heat under partial
awnings, had ruined them. Some stood, heads down,
legs straddled, too indifferent to disperse the loathly
clouds of parasites. Most were plagued by ticks,
which had the tenacity and appearance of iron bolt
heads. But the httle black cow, the rebel, blared
at us, bound and suffering as she was. Vive la
revolution ! We drove the flies from her hide, and
she tried to kick us, the darling. We found a steer
with his shoulder out of joint, lying inert in the
sun, indifferent to further outrage. That had to be
seen to, and we told the Skipper, who ordered it to be
killed. We wanted some fresh meat badly, he added.
The boatswain explained that he knew the business,
and he brought a long knife, and quite calmly thrust
it into the front of the prone creature, and seemed
to be trying to find its heart. Nothing happened,
except a httle blood and some convulsive movements.
Another sailor produced a short knife and a hammer,
and tapped away behind the horns as though he were
a mason and this were stone. The frowning surgeon
supposed the fellow was trying to sever the vertebrae.
I don't know. Yet another fellow jumped on its
abdomen. At last it died. I put down merely
what happened. No two voyages are alike, and
as this episode came into mine, here it is, to be
worked in with the sunsets and things. There was

218 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
some cheerful talk at the prospect of the first fresh
meat since England, and later, passing the cook's
galley, I saw an iron bin, and lifted its cover to see
what was there. And there was, as I judged there
would be, liver for tea that evening. But I learned
that though I am a carnivore yet I have not the
pluck to be a vulture.
The next day we passed the Cidada de Humayta,
the chief town on the Madeira. Actually it was
of the size of an unimportant home village. There
was nothing there to support the pilot's sonorous
title of cidada. For some reason we were visited to
day by an extraordinary number of butterflies.
One large specimen was of an olive green, barred
with black. Another had wings of a bluish grey,
striped with vermilion. Helicons came, and once
a morpho, the latter a great rarity away from the
interior of the woods. At four in the afternoon the
sky grew ominous. We had just time to notice the
trees astern suddenly convulsed, writhing where they
stood, and the storm sprang at us, roaring, ripping
away awnings and loose gear. The noise in the forest
round us was that of cataclysm. The rain was an
obscurity of falling water, and the trees turned to
shadows in a grey fog. The ship became full of
waterspouts, large streams and jets curving away
from every prominence. This lasted for but twenty
minutes ; but the impending clouds remained to
hasten night when we were in a place which, more
than anything I have seen, was the world before
the coming of man. The river had broadened
and shallowed. The forest enclosed us. There were
islands, and the rank growth of swamps. We could

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 219
see, through breaks in the igapo, extensive lagoons
beyond, with the high jungle brooding over empty
silver areas. Herons, storks, and egrets were white
and still about the tangle of aqueous roots. It was
all as silent and other world as a picture.
Jan. 29. When shouting awakened me this morning
I saw the chief hurry by my cabin, half-dressed, and
looking very anxious. By the almost stationary
foliage I could see the ship had merely way on her.
Out I jumped. On the forecastle head a crowd was
gathered, peering overside. A large tree was
balanced accurately athwart our stem, and refused
to move. What worried the staff was that it would,
when free, sidle along our plates till it fouled the
propeller. The propeller had to be kept moving,
for the river was narrow and its current unusually
rapid. There the log obstinately remained for the
most of an hour, but suddenly made up its mind,
and went, clearing the stern by inches. After that
the engines were driven full, for the pilot hoped to
get us to Porto Velho by nightfall. In the late
afternoon, when passing the Rio Jamary, the clouds
again banked astern, bringing night before its time,
and another violent storm compelled an early anchor
age. The forest was remarkably quiet after the
tumult of the squall, and the " Capella " had been put
over to the left bank, when close to us on the opposite
shore there was a landslip. We saw a section of the
jungle wall sway, as though that part was taken by
a local tempest, and then the green cliff and its
supports fell bodily into the river, raising thunder
ous submarine explosions. Such landslides, terras

220 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
cahidas, can be rarely foreseen, and are a grave danger
to craft when they come close in to rest at night.
To-day we passed a small raft drifting down. A hut
was erected in its middle, and we saw two men within.
Jan. 30. Talk enough there has been of a place
called Porto Velho, a name I heard first when I
signed the articles of the " Capella " at Swansea,
and of what would happen to us when we arrived.
But I am looking upon it all as a strange myth.
There has been time to prove those superstitions of
Porto Velho. And what has happened ? There
was a month we had of the vacant sea, and one day
we came upon a low coast where palms grew. There
has been a month which has striped the vacant mind
in three colours, constant in relative position, but
without form, yellow floor, green walls, and a blue
ceiling. Plainly we have got beyond all the works
of man now. We have intrigued an ocean steamer
thousands of miles along the devious waterways of
a uninhabited continental jungle, and now she must
be near the middle of the puzzle, with voiceless
regions of unexplored forest reeking under the
equatorial sun at every point of the compass. The
more we advance up the Amazon and Madeira rivers
the less the likelihood, it seems to me, of getting to
any place where our ship and cargo could be required.
We shall steam and steam till the river shallows, the
forest closes in, and we are trapped. Yet the Madeira
looks now much the same as when we entered it, still
as broad and deep. I was thinking this morning we
might go on so for ever ; that this adventure was all
of the casual improbabilities of a dream was in my
mind when, smoking the after breakfast pipe on the

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 221
bridge, we turned a corner sharply, and there was the
end of the passage within a mile of us, Porto Velho
at last.
The forest on the port side ahead was uplifted on
an unusually high cliff of the red rock. Beyond
that cliff was a considerable clearing, with many
buildings of a character different from any we had
seen in the country. At the end of the clearing
the forest began again, unconquered still, standing
across our course as a high barrier ; for, leaving
Porto Velho, the river turned west almost at a right
angle, and vanished ; as though now it were done
with us. We had arrived. A rough pier was being
thrown out on palm boles to receive us, but it was
not ready. We anchored in five fathoms, about
thirty yards from the shore, and in the quiet which
came with the stop of the ship's hfe we waited for
the next thing, all hands fining the " Capella's " side
surveying this place of which we had heard so much.
Plainly this was not the usual village. Many acres
of trees had been newly cleared, leaving a great bay
in the woods. The earth was still raw from a recent
attack on what had been inviolate from time's
beginning. Trenches, new red gashes, scored it,
and holes were gouged in the hill side. You could
think man had attacked the forest here in a
fury, but had spent his force on one small spot, as
though he had struck one wound again and again.
The fight was over. The footing had been won, a
base perhaps for further campaigns because wooden
emergency houses, sheds and barracks, had been
built. The assailant evidently had made up his mind
to settle on his advantage, though he was tolerat-

222 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
ing a httle quickly rebelhous scrub. Just then he
was resting, as if the whole affair had boon over but
five minutes before we came, and now the conqueror
was sleeping on his first success. Co npletely round
the conquered space the jungle stood indifferently
regarding the trifle of ground it had lost. The
jungle on the near opposite shore rose straight and
uninterrupted from the river, the front rank,* lost
each way in distance, of an innumerable army. At
the upper end of the clearing the jungle began again
on our side, and turned to run across our bows, the
complement of the host across the water, and both
ranks continued up stream, dark and indeterminate
lines converging, till, three miles aw: a dehcate
flickering of hght, a mere dimmer, faini '^ instant,
bridged the two walls. No doubt that (u.^*-, light
would be the San Antonio cataracts, thj \'-.v . the
nineteen rapids of the Madeira. ^ „¦«
Porto Velho behaved as though we were n, latere.
A pitiless sun flamed over that deep red wou- n the
forest, and they who had made it were in their 'heltersi
resting out of sight after such a recent riot of exertion.
Nothing was being done then. Two or three white
men stood on the dismantled foreshore, placidly
regarding us. We might have been something they
were not quite sure was there, a possibility not
sufficiently interesting for them to verify. There was
a hint of mockery, after all our anxiety and travail,
in this quiet disregard. Had we arrived too late to
help, and so were not wanted ? I confess I should not
have been surprised to have heard suppressed laughter,
some light hilarity from the unseen, at us innocently
puzzling as to what was to happen next. There was

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 223
a violent screani in the forest near our bows, and we
turned woTSdering to that green wall. A locomotive
ran out from the base of the trees, still screaming.
In a lif*ie-±«»hile a man left a house, striding down
over the debris to the foreshore, and some half-breeds
brought him in a canoe to the " Capella." He was
a tall youngster, an American, and his slow body
itself was but a thin sallow drawl ; only his eyes
were alert, ini- they darted at ours in quick scrutiny.
His solemn *t>§aipying assurance and accent precipi
tated reality! s He was a doctor and he ordered us to
be mustered, on the after deck for inspection for
yellow feveci bWe were passed ; and then this doctor
went beloW{£$ the saloon, distributing his long limbs
and bod^jcf/ir several chairs and part of the table,
and bepi^b/ith lazy words and gestures to give us a
place tartne scene. We learned we should stay as
we we e till the pier was finished and that the railway
was afaually in being for a short distance. He said
somety&ig about Porto Velho being hell.
He^teft us. We sat about on deck furniture, and
waitedaon the unknown gods of the land to see what
they would send us. All day in the clearing figures
moved about on some mysterious business, but seldom
looked at us. We had nothing to do but to watch
the raft of timber and flotsam expand about our
hawsers, a matter of some concern to us, for the
current ran at six knots. Our brief sense of contact
got from the medical inspection had gone by night.
Reality contracted, closing in upon the " Capella "
with rapidly diminishing radii as the light went, till
we had lost everything but our steamer.
Into the saloon, where some of us sat listening in

224 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
sympathy to the Skipper's growls that night, burst
our cook, disrespectful and tousled, saying he had
seen a canoe, which bore a light, overturn in the
river. There was a stampede. We each seized a
lantern and leaned overside with it, with that fatuous
eagerness to help which makes a man strike matches
when looking for one who is lost on a moor. Ghostly
logs came floating noiselessly out of darkness into the
brief domain of our lanterns, and faded into night
again. From somewhere in the collection of drift
wood beyond our bows we thought we heard an
occasional cry, though that might have been the
noise of water sucking through the rubbish, or the
creaking of timbers. Our chief mate got out a small
boat, and vanished ; and we were already growing
anxious for him when his luminous grin appeared
below in the range of my lantern, and with him came
the ponderous figure of a man. The latter, deft and
agile, came up the rope ladder, and stepped aboard
with innocent inconsequence, shocking my sense of
the gravity of the affair; for this streaming object,
lifted from the grip of the boney one just in time,
was chuckling. " Say," said this big ruddy man
to our gaping crowd, " I met a nigger ashore with a
letter for the captain of this packet. Said he didn't
know how to get. So I brought it, but a tree over
turned the canoe. I came up under the timber jam
all right, all right, but it took me quite a piece to get
my head through." In the saloon, with a pool of
water spreading round him, while we got bim some
dry clothes, he produced this pulpy letter. " Dear
Captain " (it ran) I'm as dry as hell, have you brought
drinks in the ship ? "

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 225
The bland indifference of Porto Velho to the
'"Capella," whieh had done so much to get there;
the locomotive which ran screaming out of those
woods where, till then, was the same unbroken
front which from Para inwards had surrendered
nothing ; the inconsequential doctor who carefully
examined us for what we had not got ; the ruddy
man who rose to us streaming out of the deeps, as
though that were his usual approach, bearing another
stranger's unreasonable letter complaining of thirst,
were most puzzling. I even felt some anxiety and
suspicion. What, then, were all the other incidents
of our difficult six thousand mile voyage ? What
was this place to which we had come on urgent
business long and carefully dehberated, where men
merely looked at the whites of our eyes, or changed
wet clothes in the saloon, or hghtly referred to hell
— they all did that — as if hell were an unremarkable
feature of their day ? Were all these unrelated
shadows and movements but part of a long and
witless jest ? The point of it I could not see. Was
there any point to it or did casual episodes appear at
unexpected places till they came, just as unexpectedly,
to an empty end ? The man the mate had rescued
sat at the saloon table opposite me, leaning a yard
wide chest, which was almost bare, on the red baize,
bis bulging arms resting before him, and his hairy
paws easily clasped. I thought that perhaps this
imperturbable being, who could come with easy
assurance, his bright friendly eyes merely amused, his
large firm mouth merely mocking, and his face heated,
from a desperate affair in which his hfe nearly went,
to announce to strangers, " Boys, I'm old man Jim,"
p

226 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
must have had the point of the joke revealed to him
long since, and so now had no respect for its setting,
and could have no care and understanding of my
anxious innocence. He sat there for hours in quiet
discourse. I hstened to him with my ears only, his
words jostling my thoughts, as one would puzzle over
and listen to a superior being which had unbent to be
intimate, but was outside our experience. I heard
he had been at this place since 1907. He began the
work here. Porto Velho did not then exist. Off
where we were anchored, the jungle rose. He had
his young son with him, a cousin, and two negroes,
and he began the railway. Inside the trees, he said,
they could not see three yards, but down it all had
to come. There is a small stingless bee here, which
" old man Jim " called the sweat bee. It alights in
swarms on the face and hands, and prefers death to
being dislodged from its enjoyment. The heat, these
bees, the ants, the pium flies, the mosquitoes, made the
existence of Jim and his mates a misery. Jim merely
drawled about in a comic way. Fever came, and
mistrust of natives compelled him to dress a dummy,
put that in his hammock at night, while he slept in a
corner of the hut, one eye open, nursing a gun. I
could not see " old man Jim " ever having faith
that trains would run, or needed to run, where Indians
lurked in the bush, and jaguars nosed round the hut
at night. Why these sufferings then ? But we
learned the fine now penetrated into the forest for
sixty miles, and that beyond it there were camps,
where surveyors were seeing that further way
was made, and beyond them again, among the
trees of the interior, the surveyors were still,

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 227
planning the way the line should run when it had
got so far.
Though we could not get ashore, there was enough
to watch, if it were only the men leisurely driving
palm boles into the river, making a pier for us.
While at breakfast to-day a canoe of half-breeds
came flying towards us in pursuit of an object
which kept a little ahead of them in the river. It
passed close under our stern, and we saw it was a
peccary. The canoe ran level with it then, and a
man leaned over, catching the wild pig by a bind
leg, keeping its snout under water while another
secured its feet with rope. It was brought aboard
in bonds as a present for the Skipper, who begged
the natives to convey it below to the bunkers and
there release it. He said he would tame it. I saw
the eye of the beast as it lay on the deck champing
its tusks viciously, and guessed we should have some
interesting moments while kindness tried to reduce
that light in its eye. The peccary disappeared for
a few days.
There being nothing to do this fine morning, we
watched the cattle put ashore. This was not so
difficult a business as shipping them, for the beasts
now submitted quietly to the noose which was put
on their horns. The steam tackle hoisted them,
they were pushed overside, and dropped into the
river. Some natives in a canoe cleared the horns,
and the brute, swimming desperately in the strong
current, was guided to the bank. Some of the
beasts being already near death they were merely
jettisoned. The current bore them down stream,

228 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
making feeble efforts to swim — food for the alhgators.
We waited for the turn of the black heifer. She was
one of the last. She was not led to the ship's side.
The tackle was attached to her horns, and made
taut before her head was loosed. She made a furious
lunge at the men when her nose was free, but the
winch rattled, and she was brought up on her hind
legs, blaring at us all. In that ugly manner she was
walked on two legs across the deck, a heroine in
shameful guise, while the men laughed. She was
hoisted, and lowered into the river. She fought at
the waiting canoe with her feet, but at last the men
released her horns from the tackle. With only her
face above water she heaved herself, open mouthed,
at the canoe, trying to bite it, and then made some
almost successful efforts to chmb into it. The
canoe men were so panic-stricken that they did
nothing but muddle one another's efforts. The
canoe rocked dangerously. This wicked animal had
no care for its own safety hke other cattle. It sur
prised its tormentors because it showed its only wish
was to kill them. Just in time the men paddled
off for their hves, the cow after them. Seeing she
could not catch them, she swam ashore, chmbed the
bank, looking round then for a sight of the enemy—
but they were all in hiding — and then began browsing
in the scrub.
As leisurely as though life were without end, the work
on the pier proceeded ; and we on the " Capella,"
who could not get ashore, with each of our days a
week long, looked round upon this remote place of
the American tropics till it seemed we had never
looked upon anything else. The days were candent

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 229
and vaporous, the heat by breakfast-time being such
as we know at home in an early afternoon of the dog-
days. The forest across the river, about three
hundred yards away, from sunrise till eight o'clock,
often was veiled in a white fog. There would be a
clear river, and a sky that was full day, but not the
least suspicion of a forest. We saw what seemed a
hmitless expanse of bright water, which merged into
the opalescent sky walls. Such an invisible fog
melted from below, and then the revelation of the
dark base of the forest, in mid-distance, was as if
our eyes were playing tricks. The forest appeared
in the way one magic-lantern picture grows through
another. The last of the vapour would roll up
wards from the tree-tops for some time, and you
could beheve the woods were smouldering heavily.
Thenceforward the quiet day would be uninterrupted,
except for the plunge of a heavy fish, the passing of
a canoe, a visit from an adventurous visitor from
the shore, or the growing of a cloud in the sky. We
tried fishing, though never got anything but some
grey scaleless creatures with feelers hanging about
their gills. It was not till the evening when the
visitors usually came that the day began really to
move. The new voices gave our saloon and cabins
vivacity, and the stories we heard carried us far and
swiftly towards the next breakfast-time. They
were strange characters, those visitors, usually
Americans, but sometimes we got an Englishman or
a Frenchman. They took possession of the ship.
There was an elderly man, Neil O'Brien, who was
often with us. At first I thought he was a very
exceptional character. He was one of the first

230 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
to visit our ship. I even felt a httle timidity
when alone with him, for he had a habit of sitting
hmply, looking at nothing in particular, and dumb,
and plainly he was a man whose thoughts ran in
ways I could not even surmise. His pale blue eyes
would turn upon me with that searching openness
which may mean childish innocence or madness,
and I could not forget the whispers I had heard of his
dangerously inflammable nature. I could not find
common footing with him for some time. My
trouble was that I had come out direct from a country
where few men are free, and so most of us hve in
doubt of what would happen to us if we were to act
as though we were free men. Where, if a self-reliant
man contemptuously dares to a bleak and perilous
extremity, he makes all his lawful fellows in-draw
their timid breaths ; that land where even a reward
has been instituted, as for merit, for uncomplaining
endurance under life-long hardships, and called an
old-age pension. You cannot live much of your
life with natural servants, the judicious and impartial,
the hght shy, and those who look twice carefully,
but never leap, without betraying some reflected
pallor of their anaemia. O'Brien, the quiet master
of his own time, with his eyes I could not read, and
his gun, betrayed obliquely in our casual talks to
gether such an ingenuous indifference to accepted
things and authority, that I had nothing to work
with when gauging him. He was his own standard
of conduct. I judged his bearing towards the
authority of officials would be tolerant, and even
tender, as men use with wilful children. He was not
a rebel, as we understand it, one who at last grows

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 231
impatient and angry, and so votes for the other
party. I suppose he was not opposed to authority,
unless it were opposed to him. He was outside any
authority but his own. He lived without State aid.
He himself carried the gun, always the symbol of
authority, whether of a man or of a State, and if
any man had attempted to rob him of his substance,
certainly O'Brien would have shot that man accord
ing to his own law and his own prophecy, and would
then have cooked his supper. He surprised me for a
day or two. I puzzled much over this phenomenon
of a free man, who took his freedom so quietly
and naturally that he never even discussed the
subject, as we do, with enthusiasm, in England.
What else ? It was long since he was separated from
his mother. Soon I found he was but a type. I met
others like him in this country. Their innocence of
the hmitations of a careful man like myself was dis
concerting. Once O'Brien casually proposed that I
should " beat it," cut the ship, and make a traverse
of that wild place to distant Colombia, to some un
known spot by the approximate source of a certain
Amazon tributary, where he knew there was gold.
First I laughed, and then found, from his glance of
resentful candour, that he was quite serious. He
generously meant this honour for me ; and I think
it was an honour for an elderly, quiet, and seasoned
privateer hke O'Brien, to invite me to be bis only
companion in a region where you must travel with
alert courage and wide experience, or perish. I have
learned since he has gone to that far place alone.
But what a time he will have. He will have all of
it to himself. Well— I was thinking, when I refused ]

232 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
him, of my old age pension. I should like to get
it.
Men like O'Brien are called here, quite respectfully,
" bad men," and " land sailors." The lawless lands
of the South American republics — lawless in this
sense, that their laws need be httle reckoned by
the daring, the strong, and the unscrupulous — seem
particularly attractive to men of the O'Brien type.
I got to hke them. I found them, when once used
to their feral minds, always entertaining, and often
instructive, for their naive opinions cut our con
ventions across the middle, showing the surprising
insides. They dwell without bounds. As I have
read somewhere, we do not think of the buffalo, which
treats a continent as pasturage, as we do of the cow
which kicks over the pail at milking time and jumps
the yard fence. These men regard priest, magistrate
and soldier with an indifference which is not even
contemptible indifference. They are merely Callous
to the calculated effect of uniforms. When in luck,
they are to be found in the cities, shy and a httle
miserable, having a good time. Their money gone,
they set out on lonely journeys across this continent
which show our fuss over authentic explorers to be
a little overdone. O'Brien was such a man. He
told me he had not slept under a roof for years. He
had no home, he confessed to me once. Any place
on the map was the same to bim. He had spent his
hfe drifting alone between Patagonia and Canada,
looking for what he never found, if he knew what he
was looking for. His travels were insignificant to
him. He might have been a tramp talking of Enghsh
highways. As he droned on one evening I began to

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 233
doubt he was unaware that his was an extraordinary
narrative. I guessed his unconcern must be an air.
It would have been, in my case. I looked straight
over at him, and he hesitated nervously, and stopped.
Was he wasting my time, he asked ? Prospecting
for his illusion, his last journey was over the Peruvian
Andes into Colombia. He broke an arm in a fall on
the mountains, set it himself, and continued. On the
Rio Yapura an Indian shot an arrow through his
leg, and O'Brien dropped in the long grass, breaking
the arrow short each side of the hmb, and in an
ensuing long watchful duel presently shot the Indian
through the throat. And then, coming out on the
Amazon, his canoe overturned, and the pickle jar
full of gold dust was lost. He put no emphasis on
any particular, not even on the loss of his gold.
He was pointed out to me first as a singular fellow
who kept doves ; a tall, gaunt man, with a deliberate
gait, perhaps fifty years of age, in old garments, long
boots laced to the knees, and a battered pith helmet.
He strolled along with his eyes cast down. If you
met him abroad, and stopped him, he answered you
with a few mumbles while looking away over your
shoulder. His big mouth drew down a grizzled
moustache cynically, and one of his front teeth was
gold plated- Before he passed on he looked at you
with the haughty but doubtful stare of an animal.
He seemed too slow and dull to be combustible. I
ceased to credit those tales of his berserker rage.
He always moved in that deliberate way, as if he
were careful, but bored. Or he stood before his
doves, and made bubbling noises in his loose, stringy
throat. He embarrassed me with a present of many

234 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
of the trophies he had secured in years of travel in
the wilds. One day a negro and O'Brien were in
mild dispute on the jetty, and the negro called the
white a Yankee. The river was twenty feet below
swiftly carrying its logs. O'Brien took the big
black, and with vicious ease threw him into the
water. The negro missed the floating rubbish, and
struck out for the bank. No one could help him.
By good luck he managed to get to the water-side ;
yet O'Brien meanwhile had hurried his long legs over
the ties of the skeleton structure, his face transfigured,
and was waiting for the negro to emerge, a spade in
his hand. But under other circumstances I have not
the least doubt he would have fought the Brazilian
army single-handed, and so finished, in defence of
that same negro.

IV
Night brought one of these men to each of our
cabins, and put a party of them drinking in the
saloon. After my habit of thinking of people in
crowds, as an Anglican Church, or an ethical society,
a labour movement, a federation of proprietors, or
suffragists, or Jews, or stockbrokers' clerks, crowds
moving with massed exactitude by the thousand at
least, when prompted, this man O'Brien standing on
his two legs by himself, old man Jim, and the rest,
each of them defending and running his own par
ticular kingdom, and governing that, ill or well — for
I saw them fairly drunk now and then — and never
waiting for a word from any master or delegate,
made me wonder whether till then I had met a living
man, or had heard merely of a population of bundles
of newspapers. These men had no leaders. They
attended to all that. Each had to find his own way.
They were unrelated to anything I knew, and beyond
the help of even a candidate for Parhament. I
suppose they had never heard of a Defence League.
They could have found no use for it, because a
challenge to defend themselves would never catch
them unwilling or unable. Each man soldiered him
self, and perhaps was rather too ready to deal with
a show of insolence, or an assumption of power in
another. Yet they were not the violent and head
strong fellows of romantic tales. They were simple
235

236 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
and kind, submitting with a sick smile to the prickly
ridicule of their fellows round the board. They
regarded meat, drink, and tobacco as common ; they
were ready to leap into the dark for a friend.
There was one young bearded Enghshman among
them who was more than a friendly figure to me. All
were friendly ; but the Americans bore themselves
with the easy assurance of the favoured heirs of
Adam ; though their successful work in that tropical
swamp perhaps justified them. The Enghshman
had less of that assurance of a unique favour which
was so completely bestowed that irresolution never
shook the aplomb of its lucky inheritors. He came
into my cabin one night, hoping he was not disturbing
me, and bringing as a present a sheaf of native arrows
tipped with red and blue macaw feathers, as he had
promised. " They come from Bolivia — forest Indian's — three
hundred miles from here." He explained he had
reached our point in the Brazilian forest from the
Pacific side. He had crossed the mountains, de
scended to the level jungle at the base of the Andean
wall, and followed the rivers eastward, alone in a
canoe till he chanced upon our steamer unloading
Welsh fuel into a forest clearing. To a new-comer in
a mysterious land, this was a clear invitation to
listen, and I looked at the man expectantly. He was
hghting his pipe. The country through which he
must have passed was unknown, as our maps showed.
But he simply indicated that manner of his advent, as
though it were the same as any other, and sat looking
through the door of my cabin, smoking, absently
gazing at the night scene on the after-deck.

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 237
The hombres were working at the hold immedi
ately below us, their labours made obscurely bright
by a roaring flame of volatafised oil. The fight
pulsed on the face of the Enghshman, and chequered
my cabin in black and luminous gold. Of all the
region of forest about us nothing showed but a
cloud of leaves, which leaned towards us out of the
night, supported on two pale, tremulous columns.
The hold of the ship was a black rectangle, and the
almost naked negroes and brown men moving about
it, or peering into the chasm, were hke sinister figures
on an inscrutable business about the verge of the pit.
They were not men, but the debris of men, moving
with awful vohtion, merely a bright cadaverous mask
hovering in a void, or two arms upheld, or a black
headless trunk. For the roaring illuminant on deck
dismembered the ship and its occupants, bursting
into the weight of surrounding night as a fixed ex
plosion, beams rigid and glowing, and shadows in
long sohd bars radiating from its incandescent heart.
" I'm glad you're here," said my companion. He
never gave me his name, and I do not know it now.
" I hav'n't heard home talk for a year. Hav'n't heard
much of anything. A little Spanish coming along ;
and here some American."
We continued looking at the puzzhng, disrupted
scene outside for some time without speaking, secure
in a chance and lucky sympathy. Then a basket
of coal tipped against a hatch coaming and whirled
away, scattering the men. We rose to see if any
were hurt.
" Curious, this desperate haste, isn't it ? " said the
Englishman. " At every point of the compass from

238 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
here there's at least a thousand miles of wilderness.
Excepting at this place it wouldn't matter to any
body whether a thing were done to-night, or next
week, or not at all. But look at those fellows— you'd
think this was a London wharf, and a tide had to be
caught. Here they are on piece-work and overtime,
where there's nothing but trees, alligators, tigers,
and savages. An unknown Somebody in Wall Street
or Park Lane has an idea, and this is what it does.
The potent impulse ! It moves men who don't know
the language of New York and London down to this
desolation. It begins to ferment the place. The
fructifying thought ! Have you seen the graveyard
here ? We've got a fine cemetery, and it grows well.
Still, this railway will get done. Yes, people who
don't know what it's for, they'll make a little of it,
and die, and more who don't know what it's for, and
won't use it when it's made, they'll finish it. This
line will get its freights of precious rubber moving
down to replenish the motor tyres of civilisation,
and the chap who had the bright idea, but never
isaw this place, and couldn't hve here a week, or
ishovel dirt, or lay a track, and wouldn't know raw
rubber if he saw it, he'll score again. Progress, pro
gress ! The wilderness blossoms as the rose. It's
wonderful, isn't it ? "
I was just a httle annoyed. After all, I was part
of the job. I'd made my sacrifices, too. But I
admitted what he said. Why not? It was some
thing, that fancy, that every rattle of the winch out
side, bringing up another load, moved abruptly
under the impulse of another thought from London
Town — six thousand miles away ; two months'

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 239
travel. Great London Town ! It was true. If
London shut off its good will that winch would stop,
and the locomotives would come to a stand to rot
under the trees, and the lianas would lock their
wheels ; and in a month the forest would have
foundered the track under a green flood. Where the
American accent was dominant, the jaguars would
moan at night. That long wound in the forest
would be annealed and invisible in a year. While it
persisted, the idea could conquer and maintain.
" Yes, but it's all chance," said the Englishman.
" That uncertain and impersonal will controls us.
Have you ever worked desperately, the fever in your
bones, at a link in a job the rest of which was already
abandoned, though you didn't know it ? Yet per
haps even so there is something gained, the knowledge
that all you do is fugitive, that there is nothing but
an idea, which may be withdrawn without warning
at any moment, under the most comphcated and
inspiring structure. Having that foreknowledge
you can work with a hght heart, secure against
betrayal, ready with your own laugh when the
mockery comes. A community finds it must have a
bridge ; Wall Street hears of it, and finances a con
tractor, who finds an architect to design it. An
army builds it. And then this blessed old planet
moves in its sleep, and the obstructing river flows
another way. Well for us we can rarely see the
beginning and the end of the work we are doing.
Most of the men on this job have not been here three
months. They come and shovel a little dirt, and
die. Or they get frightened, and go. But that
idea, that remains here, using up men and forests,

240 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
using up all that comes within its invisible influence,
drawing in material and pressing it into its unseen
mould, so that out of the invisible sprouts a railway,
projecting length by length, transmuted men and
timber. A courtier once gave his cloak to Queen
Ehzabeth to save her feet ; but what is that when
these men give their bodies to make an easier road
for the commerce of their fellows ? They say every
sleeper on a tropical fine represents a man. The
conquering human, who lives by dying !
" The unseen idea remains — some stranger's idea
— of gain ; profit out of a necessity not his, filled by
other men unknown to him. You can't escape it.
First and last, it uses you. It uses you up. You
may twist and double, but ' when me you fly, I am
the wings,' as Emerson says. Once, once, I deliber
ately tried to escape from it, to get out of its range.
I thought it was local, that idea, a mean and local
urge. I beheved I had escaped it too. I was young,
though, then. But we all try when we're young.
There is but one way of escape — you may use up others ;
but that isn't an easy way of escape, for some of us.
" No alternative but that, and a man cannot take
it. There you are ; use, or be used. Once I thought
I had escaped. Once upon a time, every morning
at eight o'clock, I went to an office in Leadenhall
Street. Know that place? My first job. I was
one in a crowd of fifty clerks. We sat on high
stools, facing each other across double- desks. There
were brass rails above each desk, where we rested
ledgers and letter baskets. Each of us marked his
stool somewhere with a personal symbol. My own,
my sole point of vantage there, my support in life,

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 241
that high stool ; and I would have been prepared to
maintain it upright — following our office code of
honour, I as firm as may be upon it — even if, treacher
ously blabbing, I had had to deprive all my fellow-
clerks of their supports in hfe. We were not a com
munity, working out a common ideal. An idea used
us. And that was a job I got as a favour, mark you.
Some one had known my dead father.
" I knew the name of my boss, but that was all.
I never spoke to him. I used to see him, a middle-
aged man with sad eyes and a petulant mouth, clean
shaved, and bald headed. He came in a carriage
every mormng, and went straight to a room kept
from us by opaque glass. I used to wonder what
he did in there. He rarely came into the office. When
he did come into it, his was the only voice which
ever spoke there above a whisper ; a sharp, startling,
and minatory voice. But we rarely saw him there.
A bell would ring, a sinister summons on the ceiling
over the desk of a principal clerk, and that chap would
drop anything he was doing, anything, and go. I've
seen my senior clerk, an elderly man in spectacles,
jump as if he'd been struck when his bell whirred.
It was such an awfully solemn place. Nobody ever
thought of calling across that room, but would go
round to another desk, and whisper. You felt you
were part of a grave and secret plot, scribbling away
to bring it to a completion, and that all your fellow-
conspirators were possible traitors.
" But the plot was never complete. It went on
and on, day after day, in an everlasting, suffocating
sanctity, with the opaque shining glass front of the
private room overlooking us, a luminous face entirely

242 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
blank, though you knew the brain behind it saw
everything, and was aware of all. It even knew old
Beckwith, my senior, had got deeply into debt
through his wife's doctor's bills, and had been fool
enough to go to the moneylenders. His bell sprang
a summons one morning ; in Beckwith went ; came
out again, looking grey, poor old perisher, went
straight to the hat rack, passed awkwardly through
the swing doors, letting in a burst of traffic noise from
the street, while we watched him furtively, and that
was the last of Beckwith. I have heard our boss was
a rigid moralist. He said a man who drank, gambled,
or got into debt, not being able to control his own
hfe, was no good for the business of another man. A
system should have no bowels. Out the incompetent
had to go. It was Spartan, but it paid twenty per
cent., I've heard. Once we had a rebellious interrup
tion of our sacred quiet, but only once. I never knew
exactly why it was. We had a huge factory some
where in the East End — Cubitt Town way — and one
afternoon a woman came to the counter, and asked for
the cashier. She was so obviously East End, in a
shawl, that the counter clerk was shocked at the
bare idea of it. She kept demanding the cashier.
The clerk politely, but nervously, because of her
rising, emotional voice, resisted her. She began to
shout. We all stopped to see what would happen.
Shouting there ! She was still crying out — she
wanted justice for a daughter whose body had got
into a machine, I think — and the cashier was forced
to appear. I was surprised that he was so quiet
with her. She was weeping hysterically at our
polished mahogany counter, with its immaculate

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 243
blotters, and flat, crystal ink-pots, where there were
men in silk hats, looking at the unusual scene side
ways and smiling. She could not be pacified ; and
suddenly she picked up an ink-pot, and hurled it
through that frozen glass face of the private room.
A devastating crash. The shocking, raucous horror
of blasphemy. The silence following was unendur
able. We looked to the private door for outraged
power to appear. Nothing happened. A policeman
came and removed the woman, the cashier smiling
indulgently at the offiecr, and shaking his head. The
system, after a momentary halt, moved on again,
broad, serene, and irresistible.
" I never catch the smell of an open Bible now but
it conjures a picture of that arid office, angular,
pohshed, and hard, where the ledgers before the
disciphned men exude a dusty, leathery smell. But
there I stayed for years, smelling it, and making out
bills of lading and invoices. It was my lot. There
was a junior who assisted me, a chap with flat, shiny
hair parted in the middle. He had a habit of whisper
ing about girls, when he was not whispering about
the music hall last night, or the football next Saturday.
When the cashier, a young man, and a relative of the
boss, came walking down the avenue of desks, his
sharp eyes narrowed to slits, and his mouth a little
open, it was funny to see my junior put on speed,
and get an intent and earnest look in his face.
" When I was done for the day, I'd get my book
out of my bag, and wonder, going home, whether I'd
ever see those places I read about, Java, India, and
the Congo, where you went about in a white helmet
and a white uniform, and did things in a large, directive

244 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
way, helping Indians and niggers to make something
of their country. Not this niggling, selfish, petty
chandlery written large in stone, mahogany, and
glass, disguised in magnitude and gravity. Cocoanut
palms and forests with untold tales. But like the
boys who found fun with the girls, with music halls
and football, but were afraid of the sack, I did nothing.
I was even afraid of the girls.
" One day as usual I went with some of the other
fellows to lunch, at an A.B.C. shop. We always
went there. The girls knew us and would smile at our
jokes. Small coffee and a scone and butter. My
life ! I found a Telegraph some one had left on a
chair, and I read it more because I didn't want to
listen to that virulent abuse of our mean cashier — he
certainly was mean — than because I wanted to read.
In it, by chance, I noticed an advertisement for a
book-keeper who would go to the tropics. That
I noted. Of course, I stood no chance. But I
could try.
" That night at home I wrote an application. I
wrote it, I think, a dozen times, till the letter was
impeccable, a thing of beauty and precision. I felt
this was a most momentous affair. Whether it was
the excitement of doing something in the veritable
direction of romance, or whether it was through
reading ' Waterman's Wanderings ' I don't know,
but I remember a curious dream I had that night.
I was alone in a forest which made me afraid and
expectant. It was still and secretive. You know
the empty stage in an unnatural, rosy light, with a
glorified distance in which you expect a devil or a
fairy queen to appear. There was a hammock hang-

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 245
ing motionless from a branch. Something was in it,
but I could not see what. That hammock was as
still as the leaves hanging over it. Then the hammock
shook, and a girl rose in it and smiled at me. She
was tiny, but adult, and her eyes were shining in the
dusk of her hair, which fell thickly over her little,
coffee-coloured breasts.
" A telegram came for me, just as I was leaving
for the office one morning. It required me to call
on Mr Utah R. Brewster at the Hotel Palace, that
very day, but at a time when I should have been
industriously at work for another. The question
was, shoufd I catch that morning 'bus I had never
missed — or take all the possibilities beyond this door
which promised to open on romance ? I made up.
my mind, which went drunk with rebellion. I got
into my seventh-day clothes. Utah R. Brewster
and freedom ! The Blackwall 'bus — do you re
member those old hearses, with a straight companion-
ladder to the upper deck where the outside passengers
sat, knees up, back to back along the middle ? — well,
it had to go by the office, and I was actually in doubt
whether, aware of my unprecedented revolt, it would
stop outside the familiar glum office and lawfully
refuse to budge till I alighted. It went on, blunder
ing past the place, all strangely unconscious of what
it was doing, bearing me with my courage screwed
down to bursting-point. The driver even said what
a lovely May morning it was.
" The Hotel Palace ! I had often seen that ornate
building when Saturday afternoon release took me
west. Red carpeting on the steps, a ghmpse of
ferns, women all as strange as exotics going in and

246 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
out, and between me and it a chasm which cut clear
to the very centre of the earth. I carried my attack
beyond the portals. It was nothing, after all. A
flunkey put me in a chair too full of cushions to be
easy, and I watched men and women who, at that
time of the day, when all the folk I knew were making
desperate and cunning efforts to keep their places
here safe — I watched those men and women behaving
as though all eternity were theirs, and it was the
angels' business to bear them up. It was as great a
mystery to me, whose every week-day morning was
the inviolate possession of another, as Joshua's solar
miracle. I was called, led along a silent corridor full
of shut doors, and after a long walk found myself
beyond all the noise of London, far in solitude with
a man in a dressing-gown, who stood before a fire,
working a cigar with strong, mobile lips. He put up
a monocle, and looked at me shyly. Then began to
walk up and down the hearth-rug, talking.
" ' Well,' he said. ' All right. I guess you'll do.
Say, you look pretty fit. You don't drink, eh?
Don't get nervous when you see the dead, huh ?
All right.' He put his monocle back into his eye, and
grinned at me. I told him, in a rush, how much I
wanted to see the tropics. He said nothing. He
got a large blue map, intricate with white lines, and
told me of The Company. The Job."
" I did not fully comprehend it then. I don't now.
He left out too much. There was no beginning and
no ending. There was hardly a middle. He merely
indicated unrelated points ; but at any rate the points
were so widely sundered and so different that the bare
indication of them conveyed a sense of an enormous

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 247
undertaking, difficult, important, and necessary.
Work for an army. I should be but an insignificant
sutler in that army. But at least I should be one in
it, one of those putting this important affair through
for future generations. The communal idea, this.
The very size of it gave me a sense of security. It
was too broad-based to collapse. Success was in
herent in its impersonal nature. A state affair.
Brewster briefly mentioned some showy names,
names of great financiers. They were my generals,
and I shoud never see them. But their reputations
were partly in my keeping.
" Hallelujah ! I had escaped. I never went back
to the office. I never replied to its curt inquiry.
In a week I sailed from Liverpool. Much I heard, on
the mail boat, of The Company, this new enterprise
which was going to make a tropical region one of
the richest countries in the world ; develop it, fling
its riches to all. In four weeks more I arrived at a
small tropical island, at which I had to wait for The
Company's tug to take me to the mainland and my
business. " There was a club-house ashore, where I stayed
for a few days. There I met some men who had
been working for the Company, but for incompre
hensible reasons were leaving this work to which I
had come so eagerly ; they were returning home.
They were strangely palhd and limp as though the
dark of some hot damp underground had turned
their blood white. Their talk was drawled out,
the weary utterance of the disillusioned who yet
showed fate no resentment. They might have been
the dead speaking, long untouched by any warm

248 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
human vanity. I was really glad to get away from
them. A tug conveyed me to the mouth of the river,
up which I was to proceed to my station. I joined
a shallow-draught river steamer.
" The river, that gateway to my dream come true,
was a narrow place, a cleft in universal trees, every
tree the same. Mangroves, I suppose. Soon the
forest changed, often rising on each bank to meet
overhead. Those were uncertain places of leaves
and dead timber, and as quiet and still as churchyard
yews at midnight. The thumps of our paddle-
wheels did not sound pleasant. Deeper and deeper
we went, making turns so often that I wondered
how we could ever be got out again. Sometimes in
an open space we saw a flock of birds. I saw no
other sign of hfe. There were no men. All my
fellow-passengers — there were ten of us — were new
comers ; some from the States, some from Germany,
and a Frenchman. I was the only Englishman.
Each of us knew what was expected of himself;
none of us knew what that was which all would be
doing. There were clerks with us, miners, civil
engineers, timber men, and a metallurgist. We
speculated much, were perhaps a trifle anxious, but
reposed generally on the great idea.
" In two hundred miles we reached a clearing.
Why it should have been at that particular place did
not show. But there it was, the tangible link in an
invisible, encompassing scheme. It was my place.
I landed with my box.. There was a white man on
the river bank, sitting on a sea-chest, his head in his
hands. He looked up. ** You the victim ? ' he said.
' Well, there you are ' — sweeping a lazy arm round the

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 249
small enclosed ground — 'that's your job. There's
your store. There's your house. That's where the
niggers live.'
" ' Pedro ! ' he called. A copper-coloured native,
in shorts and a wide grass hat, loafed over to us.
' This is your servant,' he said. ' He's a bit mad, but
he's not a fool. He's all right. Keep your eye on
the niggers though. They are fools, and they're not
mad. You'll find the inventory and the accounts
in the desk in your hut. The quinine's there too.
Take these keys. Oh, the mosquito curtain's got
holes in it. See you mend it. I couldn't. Had
the shakes too bad. Cheer up ! '
" He went aboard. The steamer saluted me with
its whistle, turned a corner, and the sound of its
paddles diminished, died. I seemed to concentrate,
as though I had never known myself till that instant
when the sound of the steamer failed, when the last
connection with busy outer hfe was gone. I could
smell something hke stephanotis. In that dead
silence my hearing was so acute that I caught a faint
rustling, which I thought might be the sound of
things growing. I turned and went to my hut, sad
Pedro following with my box. The cheap American
clock in the hut made a terrific noise, filling the
afternoon with its rapid and ridiculous beat, trying
to recall to me that time still was moving quickly,
when it was quite evident that time had now come
for me to an absolute stand in a broad-glowing noon.
I sat surveying things from a chair. Then leisurely
took my envelope and read my instructions — how
I was to receive and take charge of shovels, lanterns,
machinery parts, railway metals, soap, cooking

250 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
utensils, axes, pumps, and so on, which consignments
I must divide and parcel according to directions to
come, marking each consignment for its own destina
tion. The names of a hundred destinations I should
hear about in my future work were given. They
were names meaning nothing to me. Then followed
some brief rules for a novice in the governing of men.
Through all the rules ran an incongruous note for
such a place as that, a reminiscence of Leadenhall
Street and its miserable whine. Yet it hardly dis
turbed me. I sat and thought over this expansion
of my hfe. A melancholy bird called in two notes
at intervals. The leaves which formed the thatch
of my hut hung a long coarse black fringe at the
door. My walls were of leaves, and the floor a raft
of small logs, still with the bark on, just clear of the
ground. The sunhght came through one dark wall,
studding it with sparks. No. That dubious and
familiar note in the instructions was nothing. I was
clear beyond all that now — all those occasions for
carking anxiety which deprave the worker, and
make him hate the task to which whipping necessity
drives him. The domineering manner of my in
structions, the fretfulness of the old correspondence
I found carelessly scattered about, addressed to my
predecessor, was the illusion. The forest behind
the hut, the black river, the quiet, the insects, the
foreign smell, the puzzhng men, my men to command,
who kept passing without in the violent hght, they
were not from books any more, they made evidence
direct to my own senses now. I was authority and
providence, moulding and protecting as I thought
right. This place should be kept reasonable, four

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 251
square, my plot of earth to be clean and unashamed,
frankly open to the eye of the sky. I would see
what I could do ; and I would start now. I laughed
at authority — all I could see of it — reflected in a
fragment of mirror kept to a door tree by nail heads ;
the funny hat and the shirt which did not matter,
bad as it was, for I was authority there by very
reason of that white shirt ; and the beard which was
coming. Latitude, my boy, latitude ! I strolled
out to survey my little world.
" Of the weeks that followed, nothing comes back
so strongly as some quite irrelevant incidents. A
tiger I saw one morning, swimming the river. Pedro,
insensible for two days with fever ; and death,
which came to over-rule my viceroy authority. The
first blow ! There was a flock of parrots which
visited us one day, and it surprised me that the
men should regard them merely as food. But there
was work to be done, and in a definite way ; but
why we did it — and I know we did it well — and how
it joined up with the Job, I could not see. That
was not my affair. There was the inventory to be
checked, for one thing, and before I was through
with it the work had fairly imprisoned me, and the
new romantic circumstances became blurred and
over written. That inventory was so extravagantly
wrong that in a week I was going about heated and
swearing at the least provocation. It was fraudulent.
There was a sporadic disorder of goods irreconcilable
with their neat records, though each record bore the
signs and counter-signs of Heaven knows who many de
partments of the Company. All an inextricable welter
of calm errors, neatly initialled by unknown fools.

252 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
" Every few days a steamer of the Company would
call, loaded with more goods, or would come down
river to me to take goods away. The confusion grew
and interpenetrated, till I felt that nothing but
dumping all that was there into the river, and begin
ning again with a virgin station, would ever clear
the muddle. The place grew maddening through
ridiculous blundering from outside. I had six men
to attend to, all with temperatures and all useless.
The arrears of accounts, my work on sweltering
nights while the very niggers slept, the arrears grew.
A steam-shovel came, without its shovel, and not all
my written protests to headquarters could complete
that irrational creature lying in sections rotting in
sun and rain, minus the very reason for its existence,
an impediment to us and an irritation. Constant
urgent orders came to me from up country to ship
there this abortion. I declined, in the name of
sanity. There followed peremptory demands for a
complete steam-shovel, violent with animosity for me,
the unknown idiot who obstinately refused to let a
steam-shovel go, just as though I was in love with the
damned thing, and could not part with it. But I
understood those letters. They were from chaps,
irritated, hke myself, by all this awful tomfoolery.
And from headquarters came other letters, shot with
a curt note of innocent insolence, asking whether I
was asleep there, or dead, and adding, once, that if
I could not keep up communications better I had
better make way for one who could. There were
plenty who could do it. Pleasant, wasn't it ? They
complained querulously of my accounts, almost in
sinuating that I debited more wages to the Company

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 253
than I credited to the men. I had too many sick
men, they said. Did I pamper them ? And again,
I had too many who died ; I must take care ; they
did not want the local government to get alarmed.
" The time came when I got amusement out of
those letters from headquarters ; for their faults
were so plain that I conceived the headquarters
staff having much time to spend, and a sort of in
struction at large to administer ginger to men, hke
myself, on the spot, on general principles, so to keep
us not only alive, but brisk and anxious ; and doing
it with the inconsequential abandon of httle children
playing with sharp knives. I got comfort from that
view ; and when I looked round my placid domain
where my men, with whom I was on good terms,
laboured easily and rightly under the still woods, I
told myself I was still fretting because the business
was new, that things would come easier soon. But
at night I felt I was anxious exactly because it was
all so old and familiar to me.
" One day, having given a group of men at work
in a distant corner of the clearing some advice, I
noticed a httle path enter the wood beside a big
tree. I had never been into the forest. To tell the
truth, I had had no time. The trees stood round us,
keeping us from — what ? I had always felt a httle
doubt of what was there and could not be seen. I
turned inwards. I found myself at once in a cool
gloom. I went on curiously, peering each side into
those shadows, where nothing moved, and in an
hour came to another clearing; smaller than my
own, and with no river in view. By the sun, which
now I saw again, this place was north of our station.

254 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
The opening was being rapidly choked by a new
growth. I was turning for home again, for the after
noon was late, when I saw a hammock slung between
two saphngs beside a dismantled hut. I could just
see the hammock and hut through the scrub. I
went over there, and was so carefully looking for
snakes and beastly things in the bush that I had
arrived before I knew it. The hut had been long
abandoned. The hammock had something in it,
and I was turning something in my mind as I went
up to it. There were some ragged clothes in the
bottom of it, partly covering bones, and among the
rags was a globe of black hair.
" Next morning I woke late, feeling I had gone
wrong. My hands were yellow and my finger nails
blue, and I was shaking with cold. But the tootling
of an up-coming steamer forced me to business.
The steamer was towing six lighters, filled with
labourers. They were Poles, I think. Afterwards,
I learned, some hundreds of these men had been
collected for us somewhere by a clever, business-like,
recruiting agent, who promised each poor wretch a
profitable time in the Garden of Eden. My responsi
bility, thirty of them, was landed. They stood by
the river, gaping about them, wondering, some
alarmed, more of them angry, most clad in stuffy
woollens, poor souls. Having the fever, I was not
very interested. I told my foreman negro to find
them shelter and to put them to work. We were
making our clearing larger, and were building more
store-houses. " Something fike the pale morning hght which
wakens you, weary from a fitful sleep, to the clear

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 255
apprehension again of an urgent trouble which has
filled the night with dreams, I came through each
bout of fever to know there was really trouble out
side with the new men. Daily I had to crawl about,
shivering, my head dizzy with quinine, till the fever
came near its height, when I got into my hammock,
and would lie there, waiting, burning and dry, tremu
lous with an anxiety I could not shape. Sometimes
then I saw my big negro foreman come to the door,
look at me, as though wishing to say something, but
leave, reluctantly, when I motioned him away.
" One morning I was better, but hardly able to
walk, when shouts and a running fight, which I could
see through the door, showed me the Poles had
mutinied. There was a hustling gang of them out
side my door, filling it with haggard, furious faces.
I could not understand them, but one presently began
to shout in French. They refused to work. The food
was bad. They wanted meat. They wanted their
contracts fulfilled. They wanted bread, clothes,
money, passages out of the country. They had been
fooled and swindled. They were dying. I argued
plaintively with that man, but it made him shout
and gesticulate. At that the voices of all rose in a
passionate tumult, knives and axes flourishing in the
sunlight. In a sudden cold ferocity, not knowing
what I was doing, I picked up my empty gun — I had
no ammunition — and moved down on them. They
held for a moment, then broke ground, and walked
away quickly, looking back with fear and malice.
Next day they had gone. Yes, actually. The poor
devils. They had gone, with the exception of a
few with the fever. They had taken to that darkness

256 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
around us, to find a way to the coast. Talk of the
babes in the wood ! The men had no food, no guide,
and had they known the right direction they could
not have followed it. If the Company did not take
you out of that land, you stayed there ; and if the
Company did not feed you there, you died. No
creature could leave that clearing, and survive,
unless I willed it. The forest and the river kept
my men together as effectively as though they were
marooned without a boat on a deep-sea island. Those
men were never heard of again. Nobody was to
blame. Whom could you blame ? The Company
did not desire their death. Simply, not knowing
what they were doing, those poor fellows walked into
the invisibly moving machinery of the Job, not know
ing it was there, and were mutilated.
" We had news of the same trouble with the Poles
up river. Some of the mutineers tried to get to
the sea on rafts. Such amazing courage was but
desperation and a complete ignorance of the place
they were in. One such raft did pass our place.
Some of them were prone on it, others squatting ;
one man got on his feet as the raft swung by our
clearing, and emptied his revolver into us. A few
days later another raft floated by, close in, with six
men lying upon it. They were headless. Some
where, the savages had caught them asleep.
" No. I was not affected as much as you might
think. I began to look upon it all with insensitive
serenity. I was getting hke the men I met on the
island, months before. I saw us all caught by some
thing huge and hungry, a viewless, impartial appetite
which swallowed us all without examination ; which

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 257
was slowly eating me. I began to feel I should never
leave that place, and did not care. Why should
others want to leave it, then ? Often, through weak
ness, the trees around us seemed to me to sway, to
be veiled in a thin mist. The heat did not weigh
on my skin, but on my dry bones. I was parched
body and mind, and when the men came with their
grievances I felt I could shoot any of them, for very
weariness, to escape argument. The insolence from
headquarters I filed for reference no longer, but fit
my pipe with it. But the correspondence ceased at
length, and because now I was callous to it, I failed
to notice it had stopped.
" Some vessels passed down river, coming sud
denly to view, a rush of paddles, and were gone,
tootling their whistles. The work went on, mechanic
ally. The clearing grew. The sheds spread one by
one. The inventory was kept, the accounts were
dealt with. There came a time when I was forced
to remember that the steamer had not called for
ten days. We were running short of food. I had a
number of sick, but no quinine. The men, those
quick, faithful fellows with the dog-like, patient eyes,
they looked to me, and I was going to fail them. L
made pills of flour to look like quinine, for the fever
patients, trying to cure them by faith. I wrote a
report to headquarters, which I knew would get me
my discharge ; I was not pohte. There was no meat.
We tried dough fried in lard. When I think of the
dumb patience of those black fellows in their endur
ance for an idea of which they knew nothing, I am
amazed at the docility and kindness inherent in
common men. They will give their lives for nothing,

258 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
if you don't tell them to do it, but only let them trust
you to take them to the sacrifice they know nothing
about. " That went on for a month. We were in rags.
We were starved. We were scarecrows. No steamer
had been by the place, from either direction, for a
month. Then a vessel came. I did not know the
chap in charge. He seemed surprised to see us there.
He opened his eyes at our gaunt crew of survivors,
shocked. Then he spoke.
" ' Don't you know ? ' he asked.
" Even that ridiculous question had no effect on
me. I merely eyed him. I was reduced to an im
potent, dumb query. I suppose I was like Jack
the foreman, a gaping, silent, pathetic interrogation.
At last I spoke, and my voice sounded miles away.
' Well, what do you want here ? '
" ' I've come for that steam shovel. I've bought
it.' " The man was mad. My sick men wanted physic.
We all wanted food. But this stranger had come to
us just to take away our useless steam shovel. 'I
thought you knew,' he said. ' lhe Company's bought
out. Some syndicate's bought 'em out. A month
ago. Thought the Company would be too success
ful. Spoil some other place. There's no Company
now. They're selling off. What about that steam
shovel ? ' "

We had 5200 tons of cargo, and nearly all of it was
patent fuel. This was to be put into baskets, hauled
up, and emptied into railway trucks run out on the
jetty alongside. We watched the men at work for
a few days and nights, and judged we should be at
Porto Velho for a month. I saw for myself long
rambles in the forest during that time of golden
leisure, but saw them no more after the first attempt.
The clearing on its north side rose steeply to about
a hundred feet on the hard red conglomerate ; to
the south, on the San Antonio side, it ended in a
creek and a swamp. But at whatever point the
Doctor and I attempted to leave the clearing we
soon found ourselves stopped by a dense under
growth. At a few places there were narrow footpaths,
subterranean in the quality of their light, made by
timbermen when searching for suitable trees for the
saw-mill. These tracks never penetrated more than
a few hundred yards, and always ended in a well of
sunshine in the forest where some big trees would be
prone in a tangle of splintered branches, and a deep
litter of leaves and broken fronds. And that was
as far as man had got inwards from the east bank of
the Madeira river. Beyond it was the undiscovered,
and the Araras Indians. On the other side of the
river the difficulty was the same. The Rio Purus,7
the next tributary of the Amazon westward from

260 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
the Madeira, had its course, it was guessed, perhaps
not more than fifty miles across country from the
river bank opposite Porto Velho ; but no one yet
has made a traverse of the land between the two
streams. The dark secrecy of the region was even
oppressive. Sometimes when venturing alone a little
beyond a footpath, out of hearing of the settlement,
surrounded by the dim tangle in which there was not
a movement or a sound, I have become suspicious
that the shapes about me in the half light were all
that was real there, and Porto Velho and its men an
illusion, and there has been a touch of panic in my
haste to find the trail again, and to prove that it
could take me to an open prospect of sunny things
with the solid " Capella " in their midst.
We carried our butterfly nets ashore and went
of a morning across the settlement, choosing one of
the paths which ended in a small forest opening,
where there was sunlight as well as shadow. Few
butterflies came to such places. You could really
think the forest was untenanted. A tanager would
dart a ray of metalhc sheen in the wreckage of timber
and dead branches about us, or some creature would
call briefly, melancholy wise, in the woods. Very
rarely an animal would go with an explosive rush
through the leaves. But movements and sounds,
except the sound of our own voices, were surprises ;
and a sight of one of the larger inhabitants of the
jungle is such a rarity that we knew we might be
there for years and never get it. Yet life about its
various business in the woods kept us interested
till the declining sun said it was time to get aboard
again. Every foot of earth, the rotting wood, the

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 261
bark of the standing trees, every pool, and the litter
of dead leaves and husks, were populous when closely
regarded. Most of the trees had smooth barks.
A corrugated trunk, hke that of our elm, was ex
ceptional. But when a bole had a rough surface it
would be masked by the grey tenacious webbing of
spiders ; on one such tree we found a small mantis,
which so mimicked the spiders that we were long
in discovering what it really was. Many of the
smooth tree trunks were striated laterally with lines
of dry mud. These lines were actually tunnels,
covered ways for certain ants. The corridors of this
hmitless mansion had many such surprises. There
were the sauba ants ; they might engross all a man's
hours, for in watching them he could easily forget
there were other things in the world. They would
move over the ground in an interminable procession.
Looked at quickly, that column of fluid life seemed
a narrow brook, its surface smothered with green
leaves, which it carried, not round or under obstruc
tions, but upwards and over them. Nearly every
tiny creature in that stream of life held upright in
its jaws a banner, much larger than itself, cut from
a fresh leaf. It bore its banner along hurriedly and
resolutely. All the ants carrying leaves moved in
one direction. The flickering and forward move
ment of so many leaves gave the procession of ants
the wavering appearance of shallow water running
unevenly. On both sides of the column other
ants hurried in the reverse direction, often stopping
to communicate something, with their antennae,
to their burdened fellows. Two ants would stop
momentarily, and there would be a swift intimation,

262 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
and then away they would go again on their urgent
affairs. We would see rapid conversations of that
kind everywhere in the host. Other ants, with larger
heads, kept moving hither and thither about the
main body ; having an eye on matters generally, I
suppose, pohcing or superintending them. There
was no doubt all those little fellows had a common
purpose. There was no doubt they had made up
their minds about it long since, had come to a decision
communally, and that each of them knew his job
and meant to get it done. There did not appear to
be any ant favoured by the god of the ants. You
have to cut your own leaf and get along with it, if
you are a sauba.
There they were, flowing at our feet. I see it now,
one of those restricted forest openings to which we
often went, the wall of the jungle all round, and some
small attalea palms left standing, the green of their
long plumes as hard and bright as though varnished.
Nothing else is there that is green, except the weeds
which came when the sunlight was let in by the axe.
The spindly forest columns rise about, pallid in a
wall of gloom, draped with withered stuff and dead
cordage. Their far foliage is black and undistinguish-
able against the irregular patch of overhead blue.
It never ceased to be remarkable that so httle that
was green was there. The few pothos plants, their
shapely parasitic foliage sitting hke decorative nests
in some boughs half-way to the sky, would be strangely
conspicuous and bright. The only leaves of the
forest near us were on the ground, brown parchments
all of one simple shape, that of the leaf of the laurel.
I remember a stagnant pool there, and over it sus-

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 263
pended some enamelled dragon-flies, their wings
vibrating so rapidly that the flies were like rubies
shining in obscure nebulae. When we moved, the
nymphs vanished, just as if a hght flashed out. We
sat down again on our felled tree to watch, and
magically they reappeared in the same place, as
though their apparition depended on the angle and
distance of the eye. When a bird called one started
involuntarily, for the air was so muffled and heavy
that it was strange to find it open instantly to let
free the delicate sibilation.
In the low ground beyond Porto Velho up stream
there was another place in the forest where some
times we would go, the approach to it being through
a deep cutting made by the railwaymen in the clay.
This clay, a stiff homogeneous mass mottled rose tmd
white, was saturated with moisture, and the helicon
butterflies frequented it, probably because it was
damp ; and a sight of their black and yellow, or
black and crimson wings, spread on the clean plane
of the beautifully tinted rock, was far better than
putting them in the collecting box. The helicons
are bold insects, and did not seem to mind our close
inspecting eyes. Beyond the cutting was a long
narrow clearing, with a giant silk cotton tree, a
province in itself, on the edge of the forest. Looking
straight upward we could see its fohage, but so far
away was the spreading canopy of leaves that it
was only a black cloud, the outermost sprays mere
wisps of dark vapour melting in the intense bright
ness of the sky. The smooth grey trunk was heavily
buttressed, the " sapeomas " (literally, flat roots)
ascending the bole for more than fifty feet, and

264 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
radiating in walls about the base of the tree ; the
compartments were so large that they could have
been used as stabling for four or five horses. From
its upper hmbs a wreckage of hanas hung to the
ground. Beyond this giant the path rose to a place
where the clearing was already waist high with scrub.
Then it descended again to the woods. But the
woods there were flooded. That was my first near
view of the igapo. We had approached the trees,
for they seemed free of the usual undergrowth, and
passed into the sombre colonnades. The way ap
peared clear enough, and we thought we could move
ahead freely at last, but found in a few steps the bare
floor was really black water. The base of the forest
was submerged, the columns which supported the
unseen roof, through which came httle light-, dimin
ished down soundless distance into night. After the
flaming day from which we had just come this darkness
was repellant. The forest, that austere, stately and
regarding Presence draped interminably in verdant
folds, while we gazed upon it suspecting no new
thing of it, as by a stealthy movement had with
drawn its green robe, and our sight had fallen into
the cavernous gloom of its dank and hollow heart.
It was about the little wooden town itself, where
the scarified earth was already sparsely mantled
with shrubs, flowering vines, and weeds, -and where
the burnt tree stumps, and even the door posts in
some cases, were freshly budding — life insurgent,
beaten down by fire and sword, but never to its
source and copious springs — that most of the butter
flies were to be found. In a land where blossoms were
few, these were the winged flowers. About the squalid

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 265
wooden barracks of the negro and native labourers,
which were built off the ground to allow of ventila
tion, and had a trench round them foul with drainage
and evil with smells, a Colcenis, a scarlet butterfly
with narrow, swallow-like wings, used to flash, and
frequently would settle there. Over the flowering
weeds on the waste ground there would be, in the
morning hours, or when the sky was overcast,
ghttering clouds of the smaller and duller species,
though among them now and then would stoop
a very emperor of butterflies, a being quick and
unbelievably beautiful to temperate eyes. After
midday, when the sun was intense, the butter
flies became scarce. When out of the shade of
the woods, and stranded, at that time, in the hope
less heat of the bare settlement, we could turn into
one of the houses of the officials of the company for
shelter. These also were of timber, cool, with a
verandah that was a cage of fine copper gauze to
keep out the insects. All the doors were self-closing.
The fewest chances were offered to the mosquitos.
There was no glass, for the window openings also
were covered with copper mesh. Here we could sit
in shaded security, in lazy chairs, and look out over
the clearing to the river below, and to the level line
of forest across the river, while listening to stories
which had come down to Porto Velho from the
interior, brought by the returning pioneers.
Porto Velho had a population of about three
hundred. There were Americans, Germans, Enghsh,
Brazihans, a few Frenchmen, Portuguese, some
Spaniards, and a crowd of negroes and negresses.
There was but one white woman in the settlement.

266 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
I was told the climate seemed to poison them. The
white girl, who persisted in staying in spite of warnings
from the doctors, was herself a Brazihan, the wife of
one of the labourers. She refused to leave, and
sometimes I saw her about, petite, frail, looking
very sad. But her husband was earning good money.
It was a busy place, most of it being workshops,
stores, and offices, with an engine and trucks jangling
inconsequentially on the track by the shore. The
line crossed a creek by a trestle bridge, and dis
appeared in the forest in the direction of San
Antonio. The hospital for the men was nearly two
miles up the track.
It was along the railway track towards the hospital,
with the woods to the left, and a short margin of
scrub and forest, and then the river, on the right
hand, that I saw one morning in sauntering a few
miles as many butterflies as there are flowers in an
English garden in June. They were the blossoms
of the place. The track was bright with them.
They settled on the hot metals and ties, clustered
thickly round muddy pools, a plantation there
as vivid and ahve, in the quick movements of
their wings, as though a wind shook the petals of a
bed of flowers. They flashed by hke birds. One
would soar slowly, wings outspread and stable, a
living plane of metallic green and black. There
was a large and insolent beauty — he did not move
from his drink at a puddle though my boot almost
touched him — his wings a velvety black with
crimson eyes on the underwings, and I caught
him ; but I was so astonished by the strength of
his convulsive body in the net that I let him go.

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 267
Near the hospital some bushes were covered with
minute flowers, and seen from a distance the countless
inseets moving about those bushes were a glistening
and puzzling haze.
All that morning I had felt the power of the torrid
sun, which clung to the body hke invisible bonds,
and made one's movements slow, was a luscious
benefit, a golden bath, a softening and generative
balm ; a mother heat and light whose ardent virtues
stained pinions crimson and cobalt, and made bodies
strong and convulsive, and caused the earth to
burst with rushing sap, to send up green fountains ;
for so the palms, which showed everywhere in the
Woods, looked to me. You could hear the incessant
low murmur of multitudinous wings. And I had
been warned to beware of all this. I felt instead
that I could hve and grow for ever in such a land.
Presently, becoming a httle weary of so much
strong light, I found it was midday, and looking
back, there was the ship across a curve of the river.
It was two good miles away ; two intense, shade-
less, silent afternoon miles. I began the return
journey. An increasing rumbling sound ahead made
me look up, as I stepped from tie to tie, and there
came at me a trolley car, pumped along slowly,
four brown bodies rising and falling rhythmic
ally over its handle. A man in a white suit was
its passenger. As it passed me I saw it bore also
something under a white cloth; the cloth moulded
a childish figure, of which only the hem of a skirt
and the neat httle booted feet showed beyond the
cloth, and the feet swayed hmply with the jolts of
the car in a way curiously appealing and woeful.

268 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
The car stopped, and the white man, a cheerful young
doctor chewing an extinct cigar, came to me for a
hght. He stood to gossip for a few minutes, giving
his men a rest. " That's the Brazilian girl," he said ;
" she wouldn't go home when told, poor thing."
This Madeira river had the look of very adventur
ous fishing, and the doctor had brought with him an
assortment of tackle. The water was opaque, and
it was deep. Its prospects, though the forest closed
round us, were spacious. It flowed silently, with
great power, and its surface was often coiled by
profound movements. The coils of the river, as we
were looking over the side one morning, began to
move in our minds also, and the Doctor mentioned
his tackle. There was the forest enclosing us, as
mute as the water, its bare roots clenched in aqueous
earth. Nobody could tell us much about the fish in
this river, but we heard stories of creatures partly
seen. There was one story of a thing taken from
the very place in the river where we were anchored,
a fish in armour which the natives declared was new
to them ; a fearful ganoid I guessed it, reconstructing
it in vision from fragments of various tales about it,
such as is pictured in a book on primeval rocks.
There were alligators, too, and there was the sucuruju,
which I could call the great water serpent, only the
Indian name sounds so much more right and awful ;
and that fellow is forty feet long in his legend, but
spoils a good story through reducing himself by half
when he is actually killed. Still, twenty feet of
stout snake is enough for trouble. I saw one, just
after it was killed, which was twenty-two feet in

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 269
length, and was three feet round its middle. So to
fish in the Madeira was as if one's hook and hne were
cast into the deeps where forms that are without
name stir in the dark of dreams. We got out our
tackle, and the cook had an assortment of stuff he
did not want, and that we put on the hooks, and
waited, our fines carried astern by the current, for
signals from the unknown. Yet excepting for a
few catfish, nothing interrupted the placid flow of
stream and time. The doctor put a bight of the fine
round his wrist, sat down, and slept. We had fine
afternoons, broad with the wealth of our own time.
Old man Jim came aboard and saw our patience
with amusement. He suggested dynamite, and no
waiting. The river was full of good fish, and he
would come next day with a canoe and take us where
we could get a load. It was a suggestion which
needed slurring, to look attractive to sportsmen.
Jim took it for granted that we simply wanted fish
to eat, and as many as we could get ; and next
morning there he was alongside with his big boat
and its crew. Jim himself was in the stern, the
navigator, and he was sitting on what I was told
was a box of dynamite. Now, there were two others
of our company who, but the day before, were even
eager to see what dynamite would send up from the
bottom of that river ; but when they saw the craft
alongside with its wild-looking crew, and Jim with
his rifle sitting on a power which could lift St Paul's,
they considered everything, and decided they could
not go that day. I went alone.
I suppose men do plucky things because they are
largely thoughtless of the danger of the things they

270 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
do. As soon as I was sitting on the level of the
water in that crazy boat, with Jim and his explosive,
and beside him what whisky he had not already
consumed, and saw under my nose the eddies and
upheavals of the current, I knew I was doing a very
plucky thing indeed, and wished I was high and safe
on the " Capella." But we had pushed off.
Jim, with his eyes dreamy through barley juice,
was the pilot, and there was a measure of confidence
to be got from the way he navigated us past the
charging trees afloat. There was no drink in the
steering paddle, at least. But the shore was a long
swim away ; yet perhaps it would have been as
pleasant to be drowned or blown-up as to be lost in
the jungle. We turned into a still creek, where the
trees met overhead. Jim continued his course till
the inundated forest was about us. The gloom
was hollow, the pillars rising from the black floor
were spectral, and our voices and paddles sounded
like a noisy irruption among the aisles of a temple
The echoes fled from us deeper into the dark. But
Jim was all unconscious of this ; he but stopped our
progress, and opened the box of cartridges.
I had never seen dynamite, but only heard of it.
I understood it had unexpected qualities. Jim had
a cartridge in his hand, and was digging a knife into
it. I repeat, the flooded wilderness was round us,
and below was the black deep. Jim fitted a detonator
to a length of fuse, and stuck it in the cartridge. He
was in no hurry. He stopped now and then for
another drink. Having got the cartridge ready,
with its potent filament, he tied four more cartridges
round it. I put these things down simply, but my

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 271
hand ached with the way I gripped the gunwale,
and I could hear myself breathing.
Then Jim struck a match on his breeches, with all
the fumbhng dehberation of the fully ripe — brushing
the vine leaves from his eyes the better to see what
he was doing — and he lit the fuse, after it had twice
dodged the match. It fizzed. The splutter worked
downwards energetically. Jim did not deign to
look at it, though it fascinated me. He slowly
scratched his back with his disengaged hand, and
gazed absently into the forest.
The spark and its spurts of smoke were now near
the bottom. Jim changed the menace into his
right hand, in order to reach another part of his
back with his leisurely left. His eyes were still on
the forest. I kept swallowing.
" Jim," I said eagerly — though I did not know
I was going to speak — " don't — don't you think
you'd better throw it away now ? "
He regarded me steadily, with eyes half shut.
The spark spurted, and dropped another inch. He
looked at it. He looked round the waters without
haste. Then, and I could have cried aloud, he
threw the shocking handful away from us.
It sank. There were a few bubbles, and we sat
regarding each other in the quiet of a time which
had been long dead, waiting for something to happen
in a time to come. At the end of two weeks the
bottom of the river fell out, with the noise of the
collapse of an iron foundry on a Sunday. Our boat
tried to leap upwards, but failed. The water did not
burst asunder. It vibrated, and was then convulsed.
Dead fish appeared everywhere, patches of white

272 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
all round ; but we hardly saw them. There was a
great head which emerged from the floor, looking
upwards sleepily, and two hands moved slowly.
These quietly sank again. The tail of the saurean
appeared, slowly described a half circle, and went.
The big alligator then hfted itself, and performed
some grotesque antics with deliberation and gravity.
Then it gathered speed. It rotated, thrashed, and
drummed. It did all that a ten-horse-power maniac
might. I think the natives shrieked. I think Jim
kept saying " hell " ; for I was conscious only with
my eyes. When the dizzy reptile recovered, it shot
away among the trees hke a torpedo.
We went home. That night I understand the
second mate was kept awake listening to me, as I
slept, bursting into spasms of dreadful merriment.
When you are lost in the map of a country that is
beyond the worn routes, trying to discover therein
the place name which is the most secluded and in
accessible, if the map should happen to be that of
South America, then your thought would naturally
wander to the neighbourhood of San Antonio of the
Rio Madeira. There you stay, to wonder what
strange people and rocks and trees are to be found
at San Antonio. It looks remote, even on the map.
The sign which stands for the village is caught in
a central loop of the mesh which is the river system
of the Amazon forest. San Antonio must be beyond
all, and a great journey. It is far outside the radius.
And that would be enough, to be beyond the last
ripple of the traffic and at peace, where that dark
disquiet, that sombre emanation which rises from the

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 273
soured earth where myriads have their chimneys,
their troubles and their strife, staining even the
morning and the morning thought, is no more. A
place where the light has the clarity of the first dawn,
and one might hear, while sure of absolute solitude,
the winding of a strange horn, and suspect, when
coming to an opening in the woods, the flight of a
shining one ; for somewhere the ancient gods must
have sanctuary. A land where the rocks have the
moss of unvisited fastnesses, and you can snuff the
scents of original day.
Where we were anchored, San Antonio was in
view, about five miles up stream. Where at the
end of that reach of river a line of tremulous light,
which we thought was the cataracts, bridged the
converging palisades of the jungle, in the trees of
the right bank it was sometimes easy to believe
there was a glint of white buildings. But looking
again, to reassure your sight, the apparition of dwel
lings vanished. At night, in the quiet, sometimes
the ears could detect the shudder of the weighty
rapids by San Antonio ; but it was merely a tremor
felt ; there was no sound. The village remained
to us for some time just that uncertain gleam by
day, and the rapids but a minute reduction of
a turmoil that was far. For in that languor
ous heat we counted miles differently, and it was
pleasanter to suspect than to go and prove, and
much easier.
One day I went. When in a small boat the
jungle towered. The river, too, had a differ
ent character. From the shore, or from the big
" Capella," the river was an expanse of light, an im-

274 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
pression of shining peace. Whenever you got close
to its surface it became ahve and menacingly
intimate. Our little boat seemed to roll in the
powerful folds of a monster which wallowed pon
derously and without ceasing. The trees afloat,
charging down swiftly and in what one felt was an
ominous quiet, stood well above our tiny craft.
We steered close in-shore to avoid the drifting
wood and the set of the current. The jungle's sheer
height, confusion, and intensity were more awesome
than when seen from the steamer. Not many of the
trees were of great beam, but their consistent height,
with the hanas in a wreck from the far overhanging
cornice, dwarfed our boat to an unimportant straw.
At times the forest had a selvage of cane, and growths
of arrow grass, bearing long white plumes twelve
feet above us, and a pair of fan-shaped leaves resem
bling palm leaves.
The sound of the cataracts increased, and a barrier
grew in height athwart the Madeira. Mounting
high right ahead of us at last was a mass of granite
boulders, with broad smooth surfaces, having the
structure of gigantic masonry in ruin which weathered
plutonic rock so often assumes. Beyond the barrier
the river was plainly above our level. It was seen,
resplendent as quicksilver, through the crenellations
of the black rocks. One central mass of rock, higher
than the rest, had a crown of dark and individual
palms, standing paramount in the upper hght.
Yet, with that gleam of wide river behind, no great
rush of water broke there. A few fountains spurted,
apparently without source, and collapsed, and pulsed
again. The white runnels of foam which laced the

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 275
contours of the piled boulders gave the barrier the
appearance of being miraculously uphfted, as though
one saw thin dayhght through its interstices. Not
till the village was in view did we see where the main
river avoided the barrier. The course here was
looped. Above the barrier the river turned from the
right bank, and heaped itself in a smooth steep glide
through a narrow pass against the opposite shore,
the roaring welter then running obliquely across the
foot of the rocks to the front of San Antonio on the
right bank again. The forest beside the falls seemed
to be tremulous with continuous and profound under
ground thunder.
The httle huddle of San Antonio's white houses
is on shghtly rising ground, and the lambent green
of the jungle is beside them and over them. The
foliage presses the village down to the river. Like
every Amazonian town and village, it appears, set in
that forest, as rare a human foothold as a ship in
mid-ocean ; a few lights and a few voices in the dark
and interminable wastes. So I landed from our
little craft elated with a sense of luckily acquired
security. The white embowered village, the leaping fountains
and the rocks, the air in a flutter with the shock of
ponderous water collapsing, the surmounting island
in mid-stream with its coronet of palms, the half-
naked Indians idling among the Bohvian rubber
boats hauled up to the foreshore below, the unex
plored jungle which closed in and framed the scene,
the fierce sun set in the rounded amphtude of the
clouds of the rains, made the tropical picture which
was the right reward for a great journey. I had

276 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
come down long weeks of empty leisure, in which
the mind got farther and farther away from the
cities where time is so carefully measured and
highly valued. The centre of the ultimate wilder
ness was more than a matter of fact. It was now a
personal conviction which needed no verification.
The village had but one street. There were two
rows of houses of a single storey, built of clay and
plaster, dilapidated, the whitewash stained and
peeling, every house open and cavernous below,
without doors, in the way of Brazilian dwellings, to
give coolness. The street was almost deserted when
we entered it. A few children played in the shadows,
and outside one house a merchant in a white cotton
suit stood overlooking the scales while the half-breeds
weighed balls of rubber ; for this town is in the midst
of the richest rubber country of the world, and all
the wealth of the rivers Mamore, Beni, and Madre de
Dios comes this way. And that was why, as we
idled through its single thoroughfare, some dark
girls came to stand at the house openings, dressed in
odorous mushn, red flowers in their shiny black hair,
and their smiling eyes full of interest in us. The
rough road between the dwelhngs was overgrown
with grass, and in the centre of it, partly hidden by
the grass, was the line laid long ago by the railway
enterprise which ended so tragically. To-day the
rubber men use it as a portage for their boats. There
were several inns, half-obliterated names painted on
their outer walls. They had crude interior walls of
mud, and floors of bare earth. In such an inn would
be a few iron tables and chairs, and there a visitor
might drink from bottles which at least bore European

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 277
labels, though the contents and cost were past all
European understanding. I forgot to say that by
the foreshore of this httle village is the head depot
of a great rubber house, a building apparently out
of all proportion to the size of San Antonio. But
I looked on that place with the less interest, though
from what my native companion told me the head
of the house is a monarch more absolute and undis
puted in this wild country than most eastern kings
are to-day.
I was more interested in the huge boulders of smooth
granite which rose strangely from the street in places,
and broke its regularity* These rounded and noble
rocks often topped the houses. What man had
built looked mean and transitory beside the poise
and fine contours of the rocks. The colony of giant
rocks had a look of settled and tranquil solidity, a
friendly and hospitable aspect. They might have
been old friends which time had proved ; the houses
beside them were alien by contrast. I felt that
San Antonio had merely imposed itself on them,
that they tolerated the village because it was but an
incident; that they could afford to wait. When I
saw them there I recognised the village of my map.
I climbed to the summit of one, over its weather-worn
shelves. It had a skin of lichen, warm in the sun
and harshly familiar. The curious hieroglyphics of
the lichen were intelligible enough, and more easily
read than the signs on the walls of the inns. I
learned where I was ; and knew that when the day
of the great rubber house had long passed, my village
would still be there, and prospering.
Below my rock, on the land side — to which I had

278 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
turned my back — was a monstrous cesspool. It was
in the centre of the village. It was the capital of all
flies, and the source and origin of all smells, vary
ing smells which reposed, as I had found when
below in the hot and stagnant street, in strata,
each layer of smell invisible but well-defined.
Among the weeds in the roads were many dere
lict cans. Over the empty tins, and the garbage,
pulsed and darted hundreds of Brazil's wonderful
insects. But I was above all that, on my high rock. Its
height released me to a wide and splendid hberty.
I cannot tell you all that my vantage surveyed.
But chiefly I was assured by what I saw that I
was more central even than my eyes showed ; they
merely found for me the intimation. Here was all
the proof I wanted ; for faith is not blind, but critical,
yet instantly transcends to knowledge at the faintest
ghmmer of authentic hght, as when an exile who
is beset by inexplicable and puissant circumstance
among strangers whose tongue is barbarous, is sur
prised at a secret sign passed there of fellowship,
and is at once content. Yet I can report but a
broad river flowing smooth and bright out of in
definite distance between dark forests to the wooded
islands below ; and by the islands suddenly acceler
ated and divided, in a slight descent, pouring to a
lower level in taut floods as smooth, noiseless, and
pohshed as mercury. Lower still was the gleaming
turmoil of the falls, pulsing, and ever on the point of
vanishing, but constant, its shouting riot baffled by
the green cliffs everywhere. But I could escape,
for once, over the parapets of the jungle to the upper

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 279
rolling ocean of leaves ; to the distance, dim and
blue, the region where man has never been.
• •>••••
There was a man who looked like a sensational
ruffian who boarded us one morning at Porto Velho,
and said he had come to find me. He was going up
into the forest, beyond the track, and would I go
with him ? That made me look at him again, and
with some anxiety ; for I had tried before to get
away, but the crowd on the " Capella " disliked the
idea. The Doctor talked dysentery and things. He
said it was safer to keep to the ship during the month
we had still to spend at Porto Velho. I felt, over
borne by their arguments, a rather thin sort of
adventurer. That mysterious railway would have
drawn the mind of any man who had not lost his
curiosity, and who valued being alive more than his
chance of old age. The track went from Porto Velho
into outer darkness. It left the clearing and the
village of mushroom buildings, the place where the
inhuman had been moderately subdued, where a
modicum of industry was established in a continent
of primitive wild, crossed a creek by a trestle bridge
in view of our steamer, and vanished ; that was the
end of it, so far as we knew. Men came back to the
settlement through that hole of the forest, and
boarded the " Capella " to tell us, in long hot nights,
something of what the forest of the Madeira was
hiding ; and they were bearded hke Crusoe, palhd
as anaemic women, and speckled with insect bites.
These men said that where they had been working
the sun never shone, for his hght was stopped on the
unbroken green which, except where the big rivers

280 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
flowed, roofed the whole land. I liked the look of
the stranger who had come to persuade me to this
rare holiday. He said his name was Marion Hill,
of Texas. He wore muddy riding breeches, and a
black shirt open at the throat, and boots of intricately
embossed leather which came well up his thighs,
spurs that would have ravelled a pachyderm, and
the insolent hat of a bandit. He had a waistbelt
heavy with guns and ammunition. I saw his face,
and divined instantly that this was a man, and that
the memory of a time with him would serve me as a
refuge in the grey and barren years, and as a solace.
I told him I would get my things together. The
Skipper called after me that if I returned too late
I should have to walk home.
There was a commissary train next morning,
taking men and supphes to the camps. It had a
number of open waggons, loaded with material,
about which the labourers going up to replenish the
gangs made themselves as comfortable as they could.
I had an indiarubber bag for all my belongings, being
told that it was best for strapping to a mule, and a
valuable hfebuoy when a canoe overturned. I
accepted it with perfect faith, for I knew nothing of
mules or canoes. The train moved off, a bell on the
engine ringing sepulchraUy. Hill and I were packed
into a box car, which had a door open on either side
for fight and air. Two American engineers were in
charge, there was an Austrian to superintend the
distribution at each camp of the provisions, the
Austrian had an Italian assistant, and a few Barbadian
blacks were there to move about the packages. I
sat on a case of tinned fruit. HiU reposed on one of

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 281
the shelves where we should stow fever victims,
when we collected them. There was no more room
in the car, and another degree of heat would have
meant complete ruin.
When Porto Velho is left for the place where the
line is to end, when completed, though it is but 250
miles away, two months at least is required for the
return journey. That way goes the paymaster,
with his armed escort, and every bundle of shovels
and tin of provisions. When I went, too, the train
helped for sixty miles. Then most of the material was
transported at the Rio Caracoles, a tributary of the
Madeira, and taken by boats in stages up the main
stream, cargoes and boats being hauled round each
cataract. TraveUers could shorten the journey by
going overland part of the way, mules being kept on
the hither side of the Caracoles river for that purpose.
We dehvered some patients at the hospital, went
through a cutting of red granite to the back of San
Antonio, and then entered the forest. That absorbed
us. Thenceforward, and until I reached the ship
again, I was dominated by the lofty, silent, con
fused, and brooding growth. Everywhere it was
dramaticaUy passionate in its intensity, an arrested
riot of green life, and its muteness kept expectant
attention fixed upon it. The right of way through
the forest was a hundred feet wide. One each side
of us the trees rose like virid cliffs. The trees usually
were of slender girth, almost as straight as fir poles,
rising perhaps for sixty feet without a branch.
OccasionaUy there was a giant, a silk cotton tree,
or the strange tree with its grey trunk and pale birch
like habit of foliage which I had noticed on the river-

282 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
side ; but they were not common. Palms were
numerous. From ground to high parapet the spaces
between the columns were fiUed with lianas, un
related big leaves, and the characteristic fronds of
the endogens. In this older part of the track, though
it had been made but httle more than a year, the
scrub was dense. The undergrowth was often so
strong and aggressive as to brush the train as we
slowly bumped along. Sometimes we went through
deep cuttings in the red clay, close enough for me to
notice it was interstratified with waterworn but
angular quartz pebbles. But the track usually was
over flat country, only rarely crossing a guUey.
At every maintenance camp we stopped to dehver
supphes. From out of a small huddle of shanties
made of leaves and poles, insignificant beneath the
forest waU, a number of languid half-breeds, merely
in pants and hats, would loiter through the hot sun
to us for their sustenance. The men of those secluded
huts must have been glad of our temporary uproar,
and our new faces. The beU rang, and we left them
to burial in their deep silence again. There were
intervening camps, which had been deserted as the
work progressed. These were even more interesting
to me. The work of the human, when he leaves it
to the wild from which he has won it with so much
pain, has an appeal of its own, with its abandoned
ruin returning to the ground again. There would
be a sandy swamp, and standing back from the line
some weather-worn shanties with roofs awry. I am
sure there were ghosts in those camps. One we
passed, and it was caUed Camp 10J, and resting
against its open front where the posts were giving

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 283
was a butterfly net. I pointed this out. " Oh, that,"
said HiU. " Old man Biddell. I knew him. He
was aU right. He was great on bugs and butterflies.
Used to wear spectacles. He was a good engineer
though. Died of blackwater fever before the line
got past this camp. That was his shack." And
that was his butterfly net, all of Biddell now, bis
sole monument and reminder. As we bumped by
the huts the helicons and swaUow tails rose precip
itously from the mangled cans and cast rubbish. I
never knew BiddeU, the man with spectacles and a
butterfly net, but a first rate railway man, who left
that net outside his hut one morning, and at evening
was buried, but now I am doomed to think of him
while I live.
It was near midnight when we reached the last
active camp but one on the hne, where we alighted.
It was wiser, I was told, to run the remaining length
of the track by daylight. Here a doctor and a few
engineers, bearing handlamps against which moths
were blundering, met us in a place which seemed to
be the bottom of a weU, for the black shadows which
rose round us shut out all but a few stars. The
men raised joyous cries at the sight of HiU ; and
they took this stranger on trust. We fed in a hut
which was four poles and a roof. One pole had a
hurricane lamp tied to it. There was an enormous
quiet, which the men seemed to delight in breaking
with their voices. Four planks nailed unevenly to
uprights was our table, and we sat crooked on a
similar but lower construction. We ate out of
enamelled plates with iron instruments, and it was
very good indeed. There were four of us who were

284 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
white, and we were babes in the wood. One of us
pretended he was playing on a Jew's-harp, sang songs
riotously, and then began to talk long and earnestly
of New York. These men hved in four railway
waggons which had doors made of copper gauze,
berths with mosquito bars, and portraits of the folk
at home ; and in the case of the doctor the waggon
smelt of iodoform, had one wall full of bottles, and a
table with a board and chessmen. In one of those
waggons I lay down to sleep under a net ; but the
blanket felt damp and had a foreign smeU. My
thoughts crowded me. For long I listened to so
much jungle pressing close to my bed, waiting for
it to make known its near but unseen presence with
a voice ; but it did not.
Next morning at sunrise the train moved forward
to the construction camp at the Rio Caracoles. I
rode on a truck pushed in front of the locomotive,
perched there with some engineers who kept a careful
eye on the track. I saw at once why the train did
not proceed at night. It was too speculative alto
gether. Behind us the locomotive's smoke stack
roUed hke a steamer's funnel when a beam sea is
running. This part of the hne crossed many ravines,
where we looked down upon the tree tops ; and when
on a frail wooden bridge which crossed a vacancy
hke that such movements of the drunken engine
behind us became dazzhng. Then, too, there were
some high " fills," or embankments. After heavy
rains these have a habit of retiring from the metals,
which are left looped and twisted in mid-air. An
engineer told me that one cannot always teU when
an embankment is on the point of retiring. He was

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 285
carefully watching, however. But we reached the
construction camp.
At the construction camp by the side of the Rio
Caracoles we stayed two days. There was the end
of the line, and the men who were growing the track
were so busy that I was left to my own devices. TiU
the railwaymen came none but the Caripuna Indians
knew what was there ; so into the woods, of course,
I would go, trying every track which led from the
camp. A botanist might have seen some difference
from the forest at Porto Velho, but I could not dis
cover any. In appearance it was exactly the same.
The trees mostly were arborescent laurels I be
lieve, with smooth brown boles which were blotched
through their outer cuticle peeling away, much in
the manner of that of the plane tree. The brown
parchments of their laurel-like leaves covered the
floor of the woods. The trees were rarely of great
diameter, but their crowns were so distant that
nothing could be made of their living foliage. I saw
no flowers at aU. There were few orchids, but the
large shapely emerald coloured leaves of pothos
plants were very frequent, sitting in the angles of
branches and trunk. Aloft was always the wreckage
of vines suspended, as vaguely seen and as motion
less as cobwebs and dilapidations in the overhead
darkness of high vaults. I rarely heard a sound in
that forest, though there was a bird which caUed.
I often heard it in the woods of the upper Madeira.
It called thrice, as a boy who whistles shrilly
through his fingers ; a long caU, and then another
whistle in the same key foUowed instantly by a
falling note. One delightful walk was along a path

286 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
which had not been made by the railwaymen, for it
was evidently old, as it ran, a cleft in the trees, not
through broken timber, but in partial sunshine, with
a mesh of vines and freely growing plants on either
side. It led downwards to a small stream, which
was cumbered with fallen and rotting timber, a cool
hoUow where ferns were abundant. It was in the
woods at the Caracoles that I first saw the great
morpho butterfly at home. This species, peculiar
to South America, is rarely seen except in the shades
of the virgin forest. One day in the twilight aisles
near the Caracoles camp, where nothing moved, and
all was a grey monotone, it so surprised me with its
happy undulating flight — as though it danced along,
and were in no hurry — its great size, and its bright
blue wings, that I rose mesmerised, stumbling after
it through the dank litter, thoughtless of direction,
not thinking of the danger of losing my way, thinking
of nothing but that joyous resplendent creature
dancing aloft ahead of me in the gloom and just
beyond my reach. Its polished blue wings flashed
fike speculae. It might have been a drifting frag
ment of sunny sky. I had never seen anything ahve
so beautiful. A f aU over a log brought me to sobriety,
and when I looked up it was gone. Afterwards I
saw many of them ; sometimes when walking the
forest there would be morphos always in sight.
The construction camp was not more than a month
old. Perched on an escarpment by the line was a
row of tents, and at the back of the tents some flimsy
huts built of forest stuff. They stood about a ruin
of feUed trees, with a midden and its butterflies in
the midst. Probably thirty white men were stationed

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 287
there. They were then throwing a wooden bridge
across the Caracoles. Most of them were young
American civil engineers, though some were English ;
and when I found one of them — and he happened
to be a countryman of mine — balancing himself
on a narrow beam high over a swift current, and,
regardless of the air heavy with vapour and the
torrid sun, directing the disposal of awkward weights
with a concentration and keenness which made me
recaU with regret the way I do things at times,
I saw his profession with a new regard. I noticed
the men of that transient little settlement in the
wilds were in constant high spirits. They betrayed
nothing of the gravity of their undertaking. They
might have been boys employed at some elaborate
jest. But it seemed to me to be a pose of heartiness.
They repelled reafity with a laugh and a hand clapped
to your shoulder. At our mess table, over the dishes
of toucan and parrot supplied by the camp hunters,
they rallied each other boisterously. There was a
touch of defiance in the way they referred to the
sickness and the shadow ; for it was notorious that
changes were frequent in their httle garrison. They
were forced to talk of these changes, and this was
the way they chose to do it. As if laughter was their
only prophylactic ! But such laughter, to a visitor
who did not have to wait tiU fever took him, but
could go when he liked, could be answered only with
a friendly smile. Some of my cheery friends of the
Caracoles were but the ghosts of men.
¦ * • • • • •
Hill warned me late one afternoon to be ready
to start at sunrise, and then went to play poker.

288 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
On my way to my hut, at sunset, I stopped to gossip
with the young doctor, where he was busy dressing
wounds at his surgery. The labourers, half-breeds,
Brazihans, and Bolivian Spaniards, work being
over, were giving the doctor a full evening with their
ailments. Mostly these were skin troubles. The
least abrasion in the tropics may spread to a horrid
and persistent wound. The legs of the majority of
these natives were unpleasant with livid scars. In
one case a vampire bat had punctured a man's arm
near the elbow while he slept, and that httle wound
had grown disastrously. We were in a region where
the pium flies swarmed, tiny black insects which alight
on the hands and face, perhaps a dozen at a time,
and gorge themselves, though you may be un
conscious of it. Where the pium fly feeds it leaves
a dot of extravasated blood which remains for weeks,
so that most of us were speckled. Even these
minute wounds were liable to become deep and bad.
There were larger flies which put their eggs in the
human body, where they hatch with dire results.
(Do not think the splendid tropics have nothing but
verdure, orchids, butterflies, and coral snakes banded
orange and black and crimson and black.) So the
doctor was a busy man that evening. The floor of
his surgery was made of unequal boughs ; the walls
and roof were of dried fronds. A lamp was slung
on a door-post. He was a young American, and he
did not grumble at bis bumpy floor, the bad light,
the apphances and remedies which were all one
should expect in the jungle, nor the number of his
patients, except comically. He told me he was rather
keen on the diseases of the tropics. He liked them.

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 289
(I should think he must have liked them.) He was
merrily insolent with those swarthy and melancholy
men, and they smiled back sadly at the clever, hand
some, and lively youngster. He was quick in his
decisions, deft, insistent, kind, and thorough, work
ing down that file of pitiable humanity, as careful
with the last of the long row as with the first ; telling
me, as he went along, much that I had never heard
before, with demonstrations. " Don't go," he cried,
when I would have left him ; for I thought it might
be he was as kind with this stranger as he was with
the others. " Ah ! don't go. Let me hear a true
word or two." He said he would give me a treat
if I stayed. He finished, put his materials away
dehberately, accurately, his back to me, while I
saluted him as a fine representative of ours. He
turned, free of his task and jolly, and produced that
treat of his, two bottles of treasured and precious
ginger ale. It was like a miracle performed. We
talked tfll the light went out.
Much later a cry in the woods woke me. It was
yet dark, but I could see HiU up, and fumbling
with his accoutrements. Out I jumped, though still
unreasonably tired; and sleepUy dressed. When
I turned to Hill, to see if he were ready, he was then
under his net, watching me. He explained he had
just returned from poker, and was wondering why
I was dressing, but did not hke to ask, knowing that
Englishmen have ways that are not American. So
the sun was up long before we were, though presently,
in a small canoe, we embarked on the Caraeoles.
This tributary of the Madeira comes from nobody
knows where. It is a river of the kind which ex-

290 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
plorers in these forests have sometimes mentioned,
to our fearful joy. The sunhght hardly reached the
water. The river was merely a drain burrowing
under the jungle. The forest on its banks met
overhead. There was little foliage below ; we saw
but the base of the forest, grey columns that might
have been of stone upholding a darkness from which
dead stuff suspended. The canoe had to dodge the
hanas, which dropped to the water. The noise
of our paddles convoyed us down stream, a rout
of panic echoes trying to escape. We came to
an opening and fuU daylight presently, and landed
by a mule corral ; and I began a lonely ride with
Hill through the forest. The mule was such a docile
little brown creature that I was left in the silence to
my thoughts, which were interrupted now and then
by the wandering blue flame of a morpho. My
mule followed HiU's mule along a winding trail, and
our leader was nearly always out of sight. I do not
remember much of my first ride in the forest. I had
an impression of being at a viewless distance from
the sun. We were on the abysmal floor of a growth
which was not trees, but the hoary pediments of a
structure which was too high and vast for human
sight. We rode in the basal gloom of it, no more
than lost ants there, at an immeasurable depth in
the atmosphere. The roof of the world was 'far
away. Somewhere was the sun, for occasionally
there was a weU which its hght had fiUed, and a
grove of green palms, complete and personal, stand
ing at the bottom of the weU, living and reasonable
shapes. Or one of the morphos would flicker among
those spectral bastions, aerial and bright as a fairy

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 291
in Hades. The sombre mind caught it at once, an
unexpected gleam of hope, a bright blue thought
to set among one's shapeless fears. We descended
into hoUows, going down into darker fathoms of the
shades ; mounted again through brighter suffusions
of day, and in a while came out upon the open lane
in the woods, the long cut in the jungle made for the
railway, when it should get so far.
Now I could see my companion. He was from
Texas, and it was easy to guess that. In the long
rides which foUowed in the land where we looked
upon what was there for the first time since genesis,
where we might have been in the hush of the seventh
day, so new, strange, and quiet was all, the figure
ahead of me, with its long boots, negligent black
shirt, the guns about the waist, and the hat with its
extravagant size nobly raked, made me stop at times
to assure myself that I was not pursuing a day-dream
of boyhood, too much Mayne Reid in my head,
especially when my wild and improbable companion
paused under a group of statuesque palms and
looked back at me — I suppose to make sure that I
was stiU there, and that the silence had not absorbed
me utterly, a faint rustle of intruding sound in a
virgin and absorbent world. And again I remember
the sparkle and lift of early morning there. The air
was new, it was stimulative, it recharged me with
buoyant youth. To breathe that air in the fresh of
the morning was exaltation, and to see the young
sunlight on the ardent foliage was to know the springs
of hfe were fuU. That was at the breakfast hour,
when the camp fires crackled and were aromatic,
the smoke going straight to the tree tops. Then

292 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
quickly the narrow track through the forest filled
with day, increased in heat till I felt I could bear no
more of it, and so gazed vacantly at the mule's ears,
merely enduring and numbed. The vitality of the
morning went, and in the fierce pour of light I
looked no more to the strange leaves and vines, the
curious fronds, the anthiUs by the way, the butter
flies and birds, but had only a duU dread that the
avenue through which we were riding was straight
and interminable. There was no escape from this
heat. There were no openings through which we
could retreat under the trees. The air was immobile ;
the air itself was the incumbent heat. The only
shadows were under the mules' bellies. Cruel and
relentless noons ! How the surveyors endured it,
standing for long eyeing their exacting instruments in
such a defeating glare, I do not know. At the end of
each day my pigskin leggings were like wet brown paper
with sweat, and my hands crinkled and bleached
as though they had been in a soda bath.
We reached another and greater tributary of the
Madeira, the Rio Jaci-Parana. Here there was
a very extensive clearing as great as the one at
Porto Velho. The bridging of the Jaci would be a
considerable undertaking, consequently there were
numerous huts dotted about the rough open ground ;
but I think the original intention in cutting back the
jungle to such an extent was that in the days to
come a town would grow there. I imagine it will
not, and that the project is abandoned. In one of
my early walks in the woods I came by chance upon
the new cemetery ; it was already large. The Jaci
country has proved to be more than usually unhealthy.

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 293
The ground was cleared down to a coarse herbage,
round which stood shadowing trees. Little crucifixes,
made by splitting a stick and putting another stick
crosswise in the sht, were planted at all sorts of
drunken angles in the ground. One large cross in
the centre stood for aU the dead. There were no
names given. A Brazil nut-tree grew alongside this
graveyard in the jungle, so tall that the flock of
screaming parrots about its foliage were but drifting
black specks.
Because HiU had a touch of the fever we stayed
for some days by the Jaci. I had a hut given to me,
typical of the rest ; but I was so much alone in it
that that hut on the Jaci, where our remoteness
from human things tested and known, the aloofness
and quiet of the forest, the deadly nature of the
romantic and beautiful river bank where we were
marooned, and the sickness of my friend HiU, threw
me upon my centre, until I began even to talk to
myself, and received such an impress of the minute
details of my little habitation that, ephemeral as it
was and now long since gone, it endures, of coloured
and indestructible stuff, with a sunny portal I still
can enter whenever my mind turns that way. It
was of four palm trunks, lapped round and over with
mats of leaves. The floor was of untrimmed branches,
two feet from the earth, and their unexpected in
equalities, never remembered, were always jolting
my thoughts as I walked across. They were crooked,
and I could see the dusty earth two feet beneath
where brown and green lizards ran. At one end
was a verandah with a narrow floor made of the fids
of soap and dynamite boxes, and laid without any

294 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
idea that some curious tenant might wish to read
the manufacturers' full names and see their complete
trade marks. It was a puzzle. There was nothing
to do, and I searched long on my verandah floor for
the clue to one embarrassing fragment of a stenciUed
word. Hill sometimes huddled in a hammock on
one side of the verandah, a leg hanging limply over,
his thin sallow face drawn and resting on his breast,
and his eyes shut ; and I sat near him on the rail,
silent, alone with any thought I met, and gazing
blankly down the steep slope, past two taU Brazil
nut-trees, to the half-hidden Rio Jaci below, and
the roof of the forest opposite, over which the sun
set each day in uplifted splendour. I remember but
one conversation during that wait. An elderly
white man came up to the verandah one evening,
and murmured something to HiU, who opened his
eyes, and looked at his visitor under weary lids.
This man was one of HiU's subordinates. He had
something to say of the work ; but one would hardly
call it speech. The flow of his fife was so weak that
he could do no more than lift a few small words from
his gaping mouth between his breaths. He held
on to the verandah. His loose clothes hung straight
down from his bones. The veins were in blue knots
on his forehead. " Say," said Hill, rousing himself,
" I want you to ride to the Caracoles, go down to
Porto Velho, and take this note to the hospital."
The man said nothing, but nodded. HiU scrawled
his note, and the man left. " He'U be dead in a
month," said Hillj five minutes after the man had
gone. " But he would not go to the hospital for his
health. I have to pretend that he must go for mine.

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 295
He may as well die in a comfortable bed. ... I
wish those damned parrots would cease ! " They were
somewhere down by the river, unseen, but all the
sound there was, their voices long, keen and dis
tracting flaws in the pellucid and coloured day-fall.
One morning we crossed the Jaci, and on the
opposite shore some mules were already geared with
Texan saddles, the hombres at their heads, waiting
for us. I considered my mule. He was a big, grey,
upstanding feUow, with the legs and feet of a race
horse, the head of a hammer, and alert and inquisitive
ears. He was very much ahve. I had no doubt he
could leave anywhere like light, when he had a mind
for it. So that I turned to HiU, and said, " Is mine
a quiet animal ? Is he vicious ? " " O say," said
my guide, glancing carelessly at my dubious mount,
" I guess he's just a mule." When a hombre shouted
at my mule he stepped briskly, with more than a
hint of the malicious rebel in his gait.
I knew it would happen, and it did. One foot
was no sooner buried in a wooden shoe caUed a
stirrup than he was off, like an explosion. A desper
ate leap got my other leg over my travelling sack,
lashed on his rump, and I came down in the saddle,
much surprised. Texan saddles are not leather
pads for riding domestic creatures, but thrones for
ruling devils, and the bit would have broken the
mouth of a hippopotamus. The brute stopped,
turned back one ear, and his thought was in his
swivel eye. " You wait," I saw him say. In the
few engrossing moments when his body was expand
ing and contracting under me I got some idea of the
force I was supposed to guide, and it did not make

296 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
my mind easy, for an office chair had been my most
unstable seat till then. Yet off we went quietly,
along the track, and Hill was in front, and my mule
was as meek as a sheep. There came a swamp, into
which he went to the knees, and I dismounted, jump
ing from hummock to hummock, encouraging him,
and showing him the best plaees. His brown eyes
were then hke those of a good woman. So leaning
forward, when we were through, I patted his sleek
neck, and gave him pleasant words. Afterwards,
when he showed a certain precious care in difficult
places, for the country was very broken, stepping
like a tight-rope walker, I was fool enough to think
it was because of our understanding. Though I
believe he would have deceived anybody.
At noon we left the track and entered the forest
by a path so narrow that the trees touched our legs,
and sometimes we had just time to duck beneath a
noose which a liana dangled in our faces. It was
a low and narrow tunnel, and it descended to a
bottom where a shallow stream brawled among granite
boulders ; thence up the trail went through the trees
and vines again, and at last we came to a httle
clearing, where there was a hut, and men who would
give us meat and drink. We dismounted. I rubbed
my mule's soft nose, and spoke him playfuUy, as a
familiar ; but when entering the hut was rebuked
by a man there for making a short cut round the
heels of my mule. " Never do it. Don't give him
a chance. A mule wiU be peaches for ten years
waiting for the sure chance of getting his heels right
on your stomach. They're not horses, them mules.
They don't bite, and they don't muzzle you and

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 297
show friendly. They've got no feelings. That chap
of yours, his mother was an ass, and his father was
old Solfernio himself. But they've all got one good
point — they're barren."
The mule stood deep in thought tiU I was mounted
again ; then instantly bolted back along the path
which led to the ravine. The idle hombre had mis
handled the reins, and I could get no pull. I went
across that clearing hke (so HiU said afterwards)
Tod Sloan up. The beast, bis ears back, was in a
frenzy, and the convulsions of bis powerful body
made my thoughts palhd and ghastly. Nothing but
disaster could stop him, and the black mouth of that
steep tunnel in the forest yawned before us, and
grew larger, though not large enough. He took the
opening as clean as a lucky shot ; but I was laid
carefuUy along bis back. Why we missed the tangle
of woods and the rocks in that precipitate descent
is known only to my lucky stars. I had my feet
from the stirrups, my toes hooked on his rump,
one arm round the horn of the saddle, and the other
stretched along his sawing neck. I saw the roots
and stones leap up and by us, close to my face.
Several things occurred to me, and one was that
some methods of dire fate were fatuous and un
dignified. I wondered also whether I should be taken
back to the ship, or buried there. The impetus of
the brute, which I expected would send us somer
saulting among the rocks of the bottom, took bim
partly up the hither slope, and soon he had to gather
his haunches for the upward leaps. I slipped off.
He swung round at the length of the reins, and
eyed me, cocking his ears derisively. A horse's nerves

298 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
are human-like, and a horse would have been in a
muck, but this murderous mule was calm and mock
ing. I watched him, and hstened for an obscene and
confident guffaw.
I found afterwards that punishment has no more
effect on them than kindness. There is no guidance
in this matter, take the mule all round. It is dealing
with the uncanny. It is better to cross yourself
when you go near a mule. Every morning about a
camp we would watch the hombres gear up those
pensive and placid creatures. They were sleek,
hssom, and beautiful, and it was a pleasure to watch
them. But as soon as the business of the day began
one of the mules (and there was no prophecy as to
which one it would be) became a homicidal maniac.
At one camp it was necessary to keep a hundred or
more mules in reserve, and there, for their health,
a sane old horse was kept also. The horse was a
knacker's body, a sorry spectacle, and in that climate
he but pottered about waiting for disease to take him.
He was smaUer than the fine and healthy mules, but
the respect the hammer-heads had for him was
comical, and a great help to the men. Without the
horse, it would have been opening the door of an
asylum to have let the mules out of the corral to
water at the river. But he led the way, and they
bunched round him bashfully, and foUowed him to
the stream. He took no notice of them whatever.
He did not flatter them by pretending to be aware
of their existence. When he had had his fill, he
turned, and ambled through them, scorning to see
them, and returned to the corral. Round went all
the mules nearest to him, and any of them on the

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 299
outskirts of the mob that stayed on because they did
not see bim go lost their heads, when they looked
up, and risked their necks in short cuts through the
timber. " Ho, mule ! " would shout the hombres
in alarm ; for even mules cost money.
The land through which we were riding shaU have
a httle railway there some day, if the men who are
building it keep their hearts of brass, and refuse in
working hours to remember London and New York.
When it is there, that short hne, it will begin and
end in places having names which wiU convey httle
meaning to people outside Brazfl ; but to know what
endurance of valour, but chiefly what raiUery and
light-hearted disregard of the gods who put baleful
forests guarded by dragons — the dragons of mythology
were lambs to what mosquitos are — in the path of
weak men pursuing their purpose, to know what has
gone to the building of that track, though it nowhere
plainly shows, for the graveyards are casual and
obscure, brings you to a stand, surprised into awe
of your feUows, as though through a coarse disguise
yqu caught a gleam of divinity. Something shows,
a light shows, which is beyond human. Would men
be so prodigal of life and time if they were not aware
of their great wealth ? I don't know. My travels
never brought me to that ultimate assurance. But
I did see that my fellow-men are indifferent, spend
thrift with their known and scanty store as though
they were immortals, the remittance men of Great
Jove. I have no doubt now the hne wiU be finished
some day ; but there were times, riding along the
roughly cleared trail where it is to be, and we came

300 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
upon places where men, in a spasm of pointless and
soon expiring energy had scratched and mauled the
pristine earth, when I did not tliink so. Always the
same dumb mystery was about us at noon as at
nightfaU. I felt we were lost at the back of the
world, that we had crossed the boundary beyond
which the voice of traffic never goes, and were idly
wandering on the confines of oblivion. Sometimes I
had that consciousness of futility which comes to us
when, in sleep, we are earnest in the absurd activities
of a dream, one point of the reason remaining awake
to wonder at the antics of the busy but bhnd mind.
Why was I there at aU ? Was I there ? Those
forlorn spots in the forest where our fellows had been
before us, which we two riders overlooked alone,
seemed to show that those men, whne in the midst
of their feverish labour, had recovered their minds,
and had seen the wilderness was too vast, was un
conquerable ; and they had fled. There before us
was what they had done. A deep trench would be
in the track, the sand thrown up on either side.
Some dead trees would be prone in our path, and we
had to ride round them. There would be a few empty
huts of leaves, with old ashes at the entrances, and
a midden with its usual gorgeous butterflies. There
would not be a sign of hfe, except the butterflies
over the refuse, and not a sound or a movement
but a chnk from our own harness, and the heads of
our mules impatient with the flies. Over the evidence
of man's far-fetched enterprise and industry, his
short and ferocious attack on the wild, brooded the
forest. That bent over us, and it might have been
solicitous and compassionate, or it might have been

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 301
merely curious about the behaviour of the surprising
creatures who had come there for the first time, and
had been so active for a while. Sitting in the pour
of the sun, looking upon the scanty work of my
feUows, and then upon the near watchful ranks
of that continent of trees pressing close to regard
the grave-hke trench into which man's hope riiight
have been thrown, I had a dread of the easy and
enduring dominion of those powers which were
before man.
We would ride on then, sometimes up to our
saddles in swamps, and every day I lost faith that
there was any company of our feUows in that desola
tion, who would take our mules at nightfaU, and
show hammocks for our rest. But always before
night caught us we would spy a few huts diminutive
under the cliffs of forest — land ho ! — and the little
outpost of two or three engineers and a doctor would
meet us as we came up. Such a camp was hke
finding security and fellowship again after the un
certainty and emptiness of the sea. The voices of
new friends disarmed the forest. It was not curious
that we found it so easy to talk and laugh.
One such camp I remember weU. We came upon
it late, and my bones, through a longer ride than
usual in the wooden saddle, had grown into an un-
jointed frame. This was the real meaning of fatigue.
My body was a comprehensive ache. Yet my mind
was alert and buoyant ; and I remembered that
perhaps it was so because I had been well bitten by
the mosquitos of the Jaci-Parana, a first effect of the
inoculation ; so I swaUowed twenty grains of my
store of quinine.

302 THE SEA AND THE JUM P'
You in settled lands, unless you hav < y vet
poor indeed and know what trouble is r.;.i whi>.
friends are, have never seen the face of your brother,
nor the serenity of evening when you have found
without expecting it, shelter for the night ; you don't
know what the taste of bread and meat is, nor the
savour of tobacco, nor what comfortable security
is the whispering of a comrade unseen in the shadows
of a resting place, nor what it is to sleep. I found
those gifts are not means to fife only, but reasons for
living too ; something to hve for. With th; e at
nightfaU, our frail little hut, beleaguered in the limit
less woods, the shack in which the ants and spiders
swarmed and gross insects rang on the netal Imp,
where we loafed in hammocks, smoking, and hstened
to the cries of we knew not what in the unkmwn
about us, was impregnable to the hosts of darkness.
Perhaps I remember that camp so wel ecaute it
was a night of full moon. There were ee huts.
We were deep in the trees. The dark w^rs of that
weU in the jungle rose sheer aU round us. Nobody
knew what was beyond the huts. The moon ap
peared just clear of the lofty parapet o' the well,
and poured down to us an imponderable rarity of
bluish fire. Wherever this fire lodged it stayed.
Half-way up projected palm fronds, and they
were heavy patterns in burnished silver. Nameless
shapes grew luminous in the dark about us. The
ragged thatch of a hut fell from its apex in a
cascade of lustrous fluid metal suddenly congealed.
The gloom beneath that shining roof was hoUowed
by the pale yeUow hght of a lamp ; so I could
see, under the eaves, the three hammocks slung

.\i3TSEA AND THE JUNGLE 303
^«m w.\. J, asts. The quiet talk of my companions
!j»s tb< jionly sound. I limped with weariness
(.©wards the voices, and sat in a shadow listening ;
,s&id looked beyond to sprays of motionless shining
foliage leaning out from inscrutable darkness. I
seemed to have escaped from my tired body; my
disembodied mind was free and at large, A camp
hunter had kiUed a jaguar there, during the afternoon,
they were saying. There were many about, for we
were beyond the railway men, the track being but a
lane a9f feUed trees. They were saying the country
there abounded with wild life. Just as we arrived
that, evening one of the men brought in a wounded
aninsiii, its-nature so disguised that I thought it was
a kind ofajiloth. It was about two feet long, and
cowffed witih long grizzled hair from its snout to the
endsof its .considerable tail ; but when I lifted it,
andsthe ]rM)r injured creature shook its hair from its
eyes, I ,-i'fa it was a monkey ; that anguished and
fealdful glfoe which met mine was of my own tiny
brother. It was a rare and little-known creature,
the Hairy Saki, the first of its kind I had seen. The
native toc& it away to eat it. I may say that at
every camp we ate what we could get ; and being
by nature squeamish I never asked what it was
that was put before me. Whatever it was, there it
was, and it was aU they could give me. I only
emphatically directed that monkey flesh would be
worse to me than hunger.
"There are plenty of tigers about here," called
one of our hosts to me ; " I'U fix you with a gun to
morrow, and we'll have some fun." But thank
you, no . I did not carry arms throughout my j ourney.

304 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
The jaguars did me no hurt when I went exploring
o' mornings ; and as for me, I was not looking for
trouble. Quite pohtely the jaguars retired while
I wandered about alone ; though I should have been
delighted to have sighted one. The whiffs of feral
odour I got, especially in the neighbourhood of the
mules, about which the jaguars prowled at night,
were my only big game trophies. Sometimes an
indistinguishable object would step across ahead of
me, or stir in a bush close by, drawing ear and eye
at once in a place where trees and leaves were always
as fixtures, like the air. I never met one of the
larger natives of the place. I knew the parrots by
their voices. I heard and smelt the cats. The
monkeys caUed from a great distance ; or a body
would shp round a tree so fike a shadow moving
that when I examined the place, and saw nothing,
it was easy to believe the eye was only suspicious.
The men began to talk of the Indians. They said
we were in the land of the Caripunas. " You won't
see them," said Hill. " I expect they are watching
us now though," he added, after a pause. I glanced
up with some interest at the spectral foliage, where
right before me the pale moonfire on leaves and
trunks framed portals in the night. I could see
nothing. " It's odds that some of them have been foUow-
ing us all day," continued Hill. " They watch us.
They can't make us out. The rubber men told us
the Caripunas would kiU and eat us. They kill the
rubber men all right, and a good job too. But they
only slip through the forest watching us. I saw
some once. On the Jaci. I jollied them into putting

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 305
their canoe ashore. It was only a bark contraption,
the roughest thing of its kind I've seen, sharpened
fore and aft by lacing the ends together with sinews.
They were fine light brown feUows, weU made, and
stark naked. The black hair of some of them was
frizzy. Curious, isn't it? But I've heard that in
the slave days runaway niggers got down here, and
the forest Indians coUared them to improve their
own miserable stock. The Brazilians have always
had a tradition of a frizzy-haired race on the Madeira ;
and here they are. They had bows and arrows,
those chaps, made entirely of cane and wood. The
arrows were tipped with macaw feathers, and were
over six feet long. I couldn't bend the bloomin'
bow. These feUows keep to the side rivers, and
their vfilages are always hidden in the woods. It's
a funny thing, but whenever the surveyors come on
a viUage they find it has been vacated about a week."
We were silent for a time, and then a half-breed
crept up to a hammock and spoke in Spanish to the
doctor. The doctor laughed, and the feUow went
away. " He's asking for a piece of that onca to eat.
He says it will make him strong." They began to
talk of that, and the talk went on to what the
Indians say of the mai d'aqua, the mother of the
waters, who frequents islands in the rivers and is the
ruin of young men, and of such dreads as the juru
pari, and the curupira, and the maty tapere.
They admitted it was easy to imagine such things
into the forest. It wasn't what was seen there.
Only the trees and the shadows were seen. But
sometimes there were sounds. One of us, when
alone making a traverse in the forest, had heard a

306 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
scream, as if a woman had been frightened, and then
there was no more sound. The camp doctor began
to talk. He was an Englishman. He sat upright in
the middle of his hammock, swinging it with one foot.
" There was a curious yarn I heard about a tiger in
Hampshire. Ah ! Hampshire ! I had a practice
there once, you know. It made me so busy and
popular that at last I began to wonder whether I
wasn't altogether too successful. It was the practice
or me. As I wanted to hve on and do some useful
work I slew the practice. I've got one or two ideas
about that beri-beri you chaps die of here. A doctor
cannot serve God and a lot of old women with colds.
... Oh yes, about that tiger. Well, one of those
travelling shows came to our viUage. I could see
the steam of its roundabout engines from my surgery
windows, and I told the farmer who rented the field
to the showmen that if he let a mechanical organ
come anywhere near my place again he could take
his gaUstone somewhere else in future.
" Late one night I got an urgent message to go
over to the show. There had been an accident. I
was taken into a caravan. There was a fat woman
dressed as a pink fairy kneehng over a man stretched
on a bunk, shaking him, and crying. The man was
dead aU right. But I couldn't find a mark on him.
Diseased heart, I supposed, but he looked a good
'un. Some of the well-made, powerful chaps have
most unrehable hearts. The woman kept crying
out something about ' that beast of a tiger.' Curious
sort of remark, and I asked the boss afterwards
what she meant. He shuffled about a bit, pretending
that she was talking silly. ' Nothing to do with the

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 307
tigress,' he said, ' although the man was found un
conscious in her cage.' 'It's such a tame thing,'
said the showman. 'Anybody could handle it.
Never shows vice. Old Jackson '—that was the
dead chap — ' he'd been inside tinkering with a
partition. When we found him she was lying in a
corner as if asleep, and only sat up and yawned when
we got him out of her cage. Come and see for
yourself.' "
" I went. There was nothing to see, except a
sht-eyed tigress sitting up in a corner of her cage,
blinking at the lantern, and looking rather spooky.
A rather smaU creature, and prettily marked — one of
the melantic variety."
" WeU, the chap was buried after an inquest, and
that inquest made me ask a lot of questions afterwards.
It was a simple affair, the inquest. Death from
natural causes. But there was something behind
the evidence of the man's wife, and I wanted to find
out about that.
" She told me she had a little girl, who got one
night into the tent where the big cats were kept.
Nobody was there at the time. Next morning she
said to her mother, ' Mummie, who was the funny
lady in Lucy's cage ? '
Lucy was the name of the tigress. The child said
that there was only the lady in the cage, and the lady
watched her. And that was aU they could get out
of the kiddie. The funny thing about it is that once
before the child had come back with a yarn like
that, after straying into the menagerie tent late at
night. The wife's idea was her husband had died of
fright.

308 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
" Don't ask me what I want to make out, boys.
I'm only just telling you the yarn. There you are.
" WeU, before the show left our viUage, I heard
they'd got a nigger to look after the big cats. He
was with the show two days. On the third day he
was missing. He went without drawing his money,
and he had left open the door of Lucy's cage. She
hadn't attempted to get out. The nigger was found
some days after, wandering about the country, and
a little cracked, by all accounts. And that's aU."
The doctor struck a match, and then hoisted his
legs into the hammock. Somewhere far in the forest
the monkeys were howhng.
" That doctor is a good body mender," said Hill to
me. " He is the most entertaining har on this job."

VI
When in the neighbourhood of the Girau FaUs we
returned to a camp known as 22, which was merely
a couple of huts, the station of two Enghsh surveyors,
who had with them a small party of Bolivians. The
Bolivian frontier was then but a little distance to the
south-west. We rested for a day there, and planned
to make a journey of ten miles across country, to
the faUs of the Caldeirao do Inferno. By doing so
we should save the wearying return ride along the
track to the Rio Jaci-Parana, for at the Caldeirao a
launch was kept, and in that we could shoot the rapids
and reach the camp on the Jaci two days earlier.
Some haste was necessary now, for my steamer must
be nearing her sailing time. And again; I agreed
the more readuy; to the plan of making a traverse of
the forest because it would give me the opportunity
of seeing the interior of the virgin jungle away from
any track. Though I had been so long in a land
which all was forest I had not been within the universal
growth except for little journeys on used trails. A
journey across country in the Amazon country is
never made by the Brazilians. The only roads are
the rivers. It is a rare traveUer who goes through
those forests, guided only by a compass and his lore of
the wilderness. That for months I had never been
out of sight of the jungle, and yet had rarely ventured
to turn aside from a path for more than a few paces,

310 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
is some indication of its character. (At the camp
where we were staying I was told that once a man
had gone merely within the screen of leaves, and then
no doubt had lost, for a few moments, his sense of
the direction of the camp, for he was never seen again.)
The equatorial forest is popularly pictured as a
place of bright and varied colours, with extravagant
flowers, an abundance of fruits, and huge trees
hung with creepers where lurk many venomous but
beautiful snakes with gem-hke eyes, and a multitude
of birds as bright as the flowers ; paradise indeed,
though haunted by a peril. Those details are right,
but the picture is wrong. ( It is true that some of the
birds are decorated in a way which makes the most
beautiful of our temperate birds seem dull ; but the
toucans and macaws of the Madeira forest, though
common, are not often seen, and when they are seen
they are likely to be but obscure atoms drifting high
in a white light. About the vfllages and in the
clearings there are usually many superb butterflies
and moths, and a varied wealth of vegetation not to
be matched outside the tropics, and there wiU be
the fireflies and odours in evening pathways. ButJ
the virgin forest itself soon becomes but a green
monotony which, through extent and mystery, domi
nates and compels to awe and some dread. You wiU
see it daily, but wUl not often approach it. It has
no splendid blossoms ; none, that is, which you will
see, except by chance,(as by luck one day I saw from
the steamer's bridge some trees in blossom, domes
of lilac surmounting the forest levels..) Trees are
always in blossom there, for it is a land of continuous
high summer, and there are orchids always in flower,

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 311
and palms and vines that fill acres of forest with
fragrance, palms and other trees which give wine
and dehcious fruits, and somewhere hidden there
are the birds of the tropical picture, and dappled
jaguars perfect in colouring and form, and brown men
and women who have strange gods. But they are
lost in the ocean of leaves as are the pearls and
Wonders in the deep. You will remember the equa
torial forest but as a gloom of fohage in which all
else that showed was rare and momentary, was
foundered and lost to sight instantly, as an unusual
ray of coloured hght in one mid-ocean wave gleams,
and at once goes, and your surprise at its apparition
fades too, and again there is but the empty desolation
which is for ever but vastness sombrely bright.
/One morning, wondering greatly what we should
see in the place where we should be the first men
to go, Hill and I left camp 22 and returned a little
along the track. It was a hot still morning. A
vanilla vine was in fragrant flower somewhere, un
seen, but unescapable. My little unknown friend
in the woods, who calls me at odd times — but I think
chiefly when I am near a stream — by whistling thrice,
let me know he was about. Hill said he thinks he has
seen him, and that my little friend looks hke a black
bird. On the track in many places were objects
which appeared to be long cups inverted, of un-
glazed ware. Picking up one I found it was the
cap to a mine of ants, the inside of the clay cup
being JioUowed in a perfect circle, and remarkably
smooth. A paca dived into the scrub near us/) It
was early morning, scented with vaniUa, and the
intricacy of leaves 'was radiant. Nowhere in the

312 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
screen could I see a place through which it was
possible to crawl to whatever was behind it. The
front of leaves was unbroken. HiU presently bent
double and disappeared, and I followed in the break
he made. So we went for about ten minutes, my
leader cutting obstructions with his machete, and
mostly we had to go almost on hands and knees.
The undergrowth was green, but in the etiolated
way of plants which have little hght, though that
may have been my fancy. One plant was very
common, making light-green feathery barriers. I
tliink it was a climbing bamboo. Its stem was vapid
and of no diameter, and its grasslike leaves grew in
whorls at the joints. It extended to incredible dis
tances. We got out of that margin of undergrowth,
which springs up quickly when light is let into the
woods, as it was there through the cutting of the
track, and found ourselves on a bare floor where the
trunks of arborescent laurels grew so thickly together
that our view ahead was restricted to a few yards.
We were in the forest. (.There was a pale tinge of
day, but its origin was uncertain, for overhead no
foliage could be seen, but only deep shadows from
which long ropes were hanging without life. In that
obscurity were points of light, as if a high roof had
lost some tiles. HiU set a course almost due south,
and we went on, presently descending to a deep clear
stream over which a tree had fallen. Shafts of day
light came down to us there, making the sandy
bottom of the stream luminous, as by a lantern, and
betraying crowds of small fishes. As we climbed the
tree, to cross upon it, we disturbed several morphos.
We had difficulties beyond in a hollow, where the

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 313
bottom of the forest was lumbered with fallen trees,
dry rubbish, and thorns, and once, stepping on what
looked timber solid enough, its treacherous sheU
collapsed, and I went down into a cloud of dust and
ants. In clearing this wreckage, which was usually
as high as our faces, and doubly confused by the
darkness, the involutions of dead thorny creepers,
and clouds of dried foliage, HUls got at fault with our
direction, but reassured himself, though I don't
know how — but I think with the certain knowledge
that if we went south long enough we should strike
the Madeira somewhere — and on we went,) For
hours we continued among the trees, seldom knowing
what was ahead of us for any distance, surviving
points of noise intruding again after long in the dusk
of Umbo. So still and nocturnal was the forest that
it was real only when its forms were close. All else
was phantom and of the shades. There was not a
green sign of hfe, and not a sound. Resting once
under a tree I began to think there was a conspiracy
implied in that murk and awful stillness, and that
we should never come Out again into the day and see
a living earth. ^HiUs sat looking out, and said, as if
in answer to an unspoken thought of mine which
had been heard because there was less than no sound
there, that men who were lost in those woods soon
went mad.
Then he led on again. j This forest was nothing hke
the paradise a tropical wild is supposed to be. It
was as uniformly dingy as the old stones of a London
street on a November evening We did not see a
movement, except when the morphos started from
the uprooted tree. Once I head the whistler call

314 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
us from the depths of the forest, urgent and starthng ;
and now when in a London by-way I hear a boy call
his mate in a shriU whistle, it puts about me again the
spectral aisles, and that unexpectant quiet of the
sepulchre which is more than mere absence of sound,
for the dead who should have no voice. This central
forest was reaUy the vault of the long-forgotten,
dank, mouldering, dark, abandoned to the accumula
tions of eld and decay. The tall pillars rose, up
holding night, and they might have been bastions
of weathered limestone and basalt, for they were as
grim as ancient and ruinous masonry. There was
no undergrowth. The ground was hidden in a ruin of
perished stuff, uprooted trees, parchments of leaves,
broken boughs, and mummied husks, the iron globes
of nuts, and pods. There was no day, but some
breaks in the roof were points of remote starlight.
The crowded columns mounted straight and far,
almost branchless, fading into indistinction. Out
of that overhead obscurity hung a wreckage of dis
torted cables, binding the trees, and often reaching
the ground. The trees were seldom of great girth,
though occasionally there was a dominant basaltic
piUar, its roots meandering over the floor like streams
of old lava. The smooth ridges of such a fantastic
complexity of roots were sometimes breast high.
The waUs ran up the trunk, projecting from it as flat
buttresses, for great heights. We would crawl round
such an occupying structure, diminished groundlings,
as one would move about the base of a foreboding,
plutonic building whose limits and meaning were
ominous and baffling. There were other great trees
with compound boles, built fiteraUy of bundles qf

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 315
round stems, intricate gothic piUars, some of the
props having fused in places. Every tree was the
support of a parasitic community, lianas swathing
it and binding it. One vine moulded itself to its
host, a flat and wide compress, as though it were.
plastic. We might have been witnessing what had
been a riot of manifold and insurgent hfe. It had
been turned to stone when in the extreme pose of
striving violence. It was aU dead now.
But what if these combatants had only paused
as we appeared ? It was a thought which came to
me. The pause might be but an appearance for our
deception. Indeed, they were aU fighting as we
passed through, those stiU and fantastic shapes, a
war ruthless but slow, in which the battle day was
ages long. They seemed but stiU. We were deceived.
If time had been accelerated, if the movements in
that war of phantoms had been speeded, we should
have seen what really was there, the greater trees
running upwards to starve the weak of light and food,
and heard the continuous coUapse of the failures,
and have seen the lianas writhing and constricting*
manifestly hke serpents, throttling and eating their
hosts. We did see the dead everywhere, sheUs
with the worms at them. Yet it was not easy to be
sure that we saw anything at all, for these were
not trees, but shapes in a region below the day, a
world sunk abysmaUy from the land of hving things,,
to which hght but thinly percolated down to two
traveUers moving over its floor, trying to get out to
their own place, y^
Late in the afternoon we were surprised by a steep
hill in our way, where the forest was more open.

316 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
Palms became conspicuous on the slopes, and the
interior of the sombre woods was lighted with bright
and graceful foliage. The wild banana was frequent,
its long ripphng pennants showing everywhere.
The hiU rose sharply, perhaps for six hundred feet,
and over its surface were scattered large stones,
and stones are rare indeed in this land of vegetable
humus. They were often six inches in diameter,
and I should have said they were waterworn but
that I had seen them in situ at one camp, where
they occurred but little below the surface in a friable
sandstone, the largest of them easily broken in the
hand, for they were but ferrous concretions of quartz
grains. After exposure to the air they so hardened
that they could be fractured only with difficulty.
We kept along the ridge of the hill, finding breaks in
the forest through which, as through unexpected
windows, we could see, for a wonder, over the roof
of the forest, looking out of our prison to a wide world
where the sun was declining. In the south-west we
caught the gleam of the Madeira, and beyond it
saw a continuation of the range of hills on which we
stood. In the low ground between the hiU range and the
river the forest was lower, and was so tangled a mass
that I doubted whether we could make a way through
it. We happened upon a deserted Caripuna viUage,
three large sheds, without sides, each but a ragged
thatch propped on four legs. The clearing was just
large enough to hold them. I could find no rehcs
of the forest folk about. Damp leaves were thick
on the floor of each shelter. But it was lucky we
found the huts, for thence a trail led us to the river.

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 317
We emerged suddenly from the forest, just as one
goes through a httle door into the open street. We
were on the bank of the Madeira by the upper faUs
of the Caldeirao. It was stiU a great river, with
the waU of the forest opposite, just above which the
sunset was flaming, so far away that its tree trunks
were but vertical lines of silver in dark cliffs. A
track used by the Bolivian rubber boatmen led us
down stream to the camp by the lower falls.
It was night when we got to the three huts of the
camp, and the river could not be seen, but it was
heard, a continuous low thundering. Sometimes a
greater shock of deep waters faUing, an orgasm
of the flood pouring unseen, more violent than
the rest, made the earth tremulous. Men held up
lanterns to our faces, and led us to a hut. It was
but the usual roof of leaves. We rested in hammocks
slung between the posts, and I ached in every limb.
But here we were at last ; and there is no more
luxurious bed than a hammock, yielding and resilient,
as though you were cradled on air ; and there is no
pipe like that smoked in a hammock at night in the
tropics after a day of toU and anxiety in a dissolving
heat, for the heat makes a pipe bitter and impossible ;
but if a tropic night is cool and cloudless it comes like
a benediction, and the silence is a peace that is
below you and around, and as high as the stars
towards which your face is turned. The ropes of
the hammocks creaked. Sometimes a man spoke
quietly, as though he were at a great distance. The
sound of the waters receded, was heard only as in a
sleep, and it might have been the loud murmur of
the spinning globe, heard because we had left this

318 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
world and had leisure for trifles in a securer world
apart. In the morning, while they prepared the httle
steam launch for its journey down the rapids, I had
time to climb about the smooth granite boulders of
the foreshore below the hut. A rock is so unusual
in this country that it is a luxury when found.
The granite was bare, but in its crevices grew cacti
and other plants with fleshy leaves and swollen stems.
Shadowing the hut was a tree bearing trumpet-
shaped flowers, and before the blossoms humming
birds were hovering, glowing and evanescent morsels,
remaining miraculously suspended when inserting
their long biUs into the flowers, their little wings
beating so rapidly that the air seemed visible and
radiant about them. Another tree here interested
me, for it was Bates Assacu, the only one I saw. It
was a large tree, with palmate leaves having seven
fingers. Ugly spines studded even its brown
trunk. I looked out on the river dubiously. A rocky
island was just off shore, crowned with trees. Be
tween us and the island, and beyond, the waters
heaved and circled, evidently of great depth, and
fearfuUy disturbed and swift. It looked aU its
name, the Caldeirao do Inferno — hell's cauldron.
There was not much white and broken water. But
its surface was always changing, whirlpools forming
and revolving, then disappearing in long wrenched
strands of water. Sometimes a big tree would leap
out of the Water, as though it had traveUed upwards
from the bottom, and then would vanish again.
We set out upon it, with an engineman and two

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 319
half-breeds, and went off obliquely for mid-stream.
The engineman and navigator was a fair-haired
German. If the river had been sane and usual I
should have had my eyes on the forest which
stood along each shore, for few white men had
ever looked upon it. But the river took our minds,
and never in bad weather in the western ocean have
I seen water so full of menace. Yet below the falls
it was silent and unbroken. It was its smooth
swiftness, its strange checks and mysterious and deep
convulsions, as though the river bed itself was in
secure, the startling whirlpools which appeared with
out warning, circhng depressions on the surface in
which our launch would have been but a straw,
which shocked the mind. It was stealthy and noise
less. The water was but an inch or two below our
gunwale. We saw trees afloat, greater and heavier
than our midget of a craft, shooting down the gently
inchned shining expanse just as we were, and express ;
and then, as if an awful hand had grasped them from
below, they were puUed under, and we saw them no
more ; or, again, and near to us and ahead, a tree
bole would shoot from below like an arrow, though
no tree had been drifting there, The shores were
far away.
The water ahead grew worse. The German
crouched by bis little throbbing engine, looking
anxiously — I could see his fixed stare — over the bows.
We were travelling indeed now. The boat, in a
rapid tremor, and oscillating violently, was clutched
at the keel by something which coiled strongly about
us, gripped us, and held us ; and the boat, mad and
terrified, in an effort to escape, made a cireuit, the

320 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
water lipping at her gunwale and coming over
bows. The river seemed poised a foot above V
bows, ready to pour in and swamp us. The Gerrm !
tried to get her head down stream. HiUs be^
tearing at his ammunition belt, and I stooped anc
tugged at my boot laces. . . .
The boat jumped, as if released. The German
turned round on us grinning. " It ees all right,'
he said. He began to roll a cigarette nervously.
" We puU it off all right," said the German, wetting
his cigarette paper. The boat was free, dancing
lightly along. The httle engine was singing quickly
and freely.
The Madeira here was as wide as in its lower
reaches, with many islands. There were hosts of
waterfowl. We landed once at a rubber hunter's
sitio on the right bank. Its owner, a Bolivian,
and his pretty Indian wife, who had tattoo marks on
her forehead, made much of us, and gave us coffee.
They had an orchard of guavas, and there, for it was
long since I had tasted fruit, I was an immoderate thief,
in spite of a pet curassow which followed me through
the garden with distracting pecks. The Rio Jaci-
Parana, a black-water stream, opened up soon after
we left the sitio. The boundary between the clay-
coloured flood of the Madeira and the dark water of
the tributary was straight and distinct. From a
distance the black water seemed like ink, but we
found it quite clear and bright. The Jaci is not an
important branch river, but it was, at this period
of the rains, wider than the Thames at Richmond,
and without doubt very much deeper. The appear
ance of the forest on the Jaci was quite different

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 321
:\j\\ the palisades of the parent stream. On the
fjdeira there is commonly a narrow shelf of bank,
ngpye which the jungle rises as would a sheer
:;a. The Jaci had no banks. The forest was
lieeply submerged on either side, and whenever an
opening showed in the woods we could see the waters
within, but could not see their extent because of the
'nterior gloom. The outer foliage was awash, and
mounted, not straight, but in rounded clouds. For
the first time I saw many vines and trees in flower,
presumably because we were nearer the roof of the
woods. One tree was loaded with the pendent pear-
shaped nests of those birds caUed " hang nests,"
and scores of the beauties in their black and gold
plumage were busy about their homes, which re
sembled monstrous fruits. Another tree was weighted
with large racemes of orange-coloured blossoms, but
as the launch passed close to it we discovered the
blooms were really bundles of caterpiUars. The Jaci
appeared to be a haunt of the aUigators, but aU we
saw of them was their snouts, which moved over the
surface of the water out of our way like rubber baUs
afloat and mysteriously propeUed. I had a sight,
too, of that most regal of the eagles, the harpy, for
one, weU within view, lifted from a tree ahead, and
saUed finely over the river and away.
That night I slept again in my old hut at the Jaci
camp, and with HiU and another official set off early
next morning for the construction camp on Rio
Caracoles, which we hoped to reach before the com
missary train left for Porto Velho. At Porto Velho
the " Capella " was, and I wished, perhaps as much
as I have ever wished for anything, that I should

322 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
not be left behind when she departed. I knew she
must be on the point of sailing.
My two companions had reasons of their own for
thinking the catching of that train was urgently
necessary. In our minds we were already settled
and safe in a waggon, comfortable among the empty
boxes, going back to the place where the crowd was.
But stUl we had some way to ride ; and, I must tell
you, I was now possessed of all I desired of the
tropical forest, and had but one fixed idea in my
dark mind, but one bright star shining there ; I had
turned about, and was going home, and now must
foUow hard and unswervingly that star in the east of
my mind. The rhythmic movements of the mule
under me — only my legs knew he was there — formed
in my darkened mind a refrain : get out of it, get
out of it.
And at last there were the huts and tents of the
Caracoles, stiU and quiet under the vertical sun.
No train was there, nor did it look a place for trains.
My steamer was sixty miles away, beyond a track
along which further riding was impossible, and where
walking, for more than two miles, could not be
even considered. The train, the boys told us bhthely,
went back half an hour before. The audience of
trees regarded my consternation with the indiffer
ence which I had begun to hate with some passion.
The boys naturally expected that we should take
it in the right way for hot climates, without fuss,
and that now they had some new gossip for the night.
But they should have understood HiU better. My
tall gaunt leader waved them aside, for he was a
man who could do things, when there seemed nothing

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 323
that one could do. " The terminus or bust ! " he
cried. " Where's the boss ? " He demanded a hand
cart and a crew. I thought he spoke in jest. A
hand-cart is a contrivance propeUed along railway
metals by pumping at a handle. The handle con
nects with the wheels by a crank and cogs through
a slot in the centre of the platform, and you get five
miles an hour out of it, while the crew continues.
For sixty miles, in that heat, it was impossible. Yet
HiU persisted ; the cart was put on the metals, five
half-breeds manned the pump handle, three facing
the track ahead, two with their backs to it. We
three passengers sat on the sides and front of the
troUey. Away we went.
The boys cheered and laughed, calling out to us
the probabilities of our journey. We trundled round
a corner, and already I had to change my cramped
position ; fifty-eight nules to go. We sat with our
legs held up out of the way of the vines and rocks by
the track, and careful to remember that our craniums
must be kept clear of the pump handle. The crew
went up and down, with fixed looks. The sun was
the eye of the last judgment, and my lips were
cracked. The trees made no sign. The natives went
up and down ; and the forest went by, tree by tree.
My tired and thoughtless legs dropped, and a
thorn fastened its teeth instantly in my boots, and
nearly had me down. The trees went by, one by
one. There was a large black and yeUow butterfly
on a stone near us. I was surprised when no sound
came as it made a grand movement upwards. Then,
in the heart of nowhere, the troUey slackened, and
came to a stand. We had lost a pin. Half a nuie

324 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
back we could hardly credit we reaUy had found
that pin, but there it was ; and the men began to
go up and down again. HiU got a touch of fever,
and the natives had changed to the colour of
impure tallow, and flung their perspiration on my face
and hands as they swung mechanicaUy. The poor
wretches ! We were done. The sun weighed untold
tons. But the sun dechned, some monkeys began to
howl, and the sunset tempest sprang down on us its
assault, shaking the high screens on either hand,
and the rain beat with the roll of kettle-drums.
Then we got on an up grade, and two of the spent
natives coUapsed, their chests heaving. So I and
the other chap stood up in the night, looked to the
stars, from which no help could be got, took hold of
the pump handle like gallant gentlemen, and tried
to forget there were twenty miles to go. Away
we went, jog, jog, uphill. I thought that gradient
would not end tiU my heart and head had burst;
but it did, just in time.
We gathered speed on a down grade. We flew.
Presently the man with the fever yeUed, " The brake,
the brake ! " But the brake was broken. The
troUey was not running, but leaping in the dark.
Every time it came down it found the metals. A
fight was coming towards us on the hne ; and the
others prepared to jump. I could not even see that
light, for my back was turned to our direction, and
I could not let go the flying handle, else would all
control have gone, and also I should have been
smashed. I shut my eyes, pumped swiftly and in
voluntarily, and waited for doom to hit me in

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 325
the back. The blow was a long time coming. Then
HiU's gentle voice remarked, " AU right, boys, it's
a firefly." ... I became only a piece of machinery, and
pumped, and pumped, with no more feeling than a
bolster. Shadows undulated by us everlastingly.
I tliink my tongue was hanging out. . . .
Lights were reaUy seen at last. Kind hands lifted
us from the engine of torture ; and I heard the
remembered voice of the Skipper, " Is he there ?
I thought it was a case."
• • • ¦ • •
That night of my return a full moon and a placid
river showed me the " CapeUa " doubled, as in a
mirror, and admiring the steamer's deep inverted
shape I saw a heartening portent — I saw steam
escaping from the funnel which was upside down.
A great joy filled me at that, and I turned to the
Skipper, as we strode over the ties of the jetty.
"Yes. We go home to-morrow," he said. The
bunk was super-heated again by the engine room,
but knowing the glad reason, I endured it with
pleasure. To-morrow we turned about.
Yet on the morrow there was stiU the persist
ence of the spacious idleness which encompassed us
impregnably, beyond which we could not go. The
little that was left of the fuel in the holds went out
of us with dismal unhaste. The Skipper and the
mates fumed, and the Doctor took me round to see
the " CapeUa's " pets, so that we might fiU up time.
A monkey, an entirely secular creature once with us,
had died whUe I was away. It was well. He had
no name ; Vice was his name. There were no tears

326 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
at his death, and Tinker the terrier began to get
back some of bis full and lively form again after
that day when, in a sudden righteous revolution, he
slew, and barbarously mangled, the insolent tyrant
of the ship. The monkey had feared none but Mack,
our red, blue and yeUow macaw, a monstrous and
resplendent fowl in whose iron biU even Brazil nuts
were soft.
But we all respected Mack. He was the wisest
thing on the ship. If an idle man felt high-spirited
and approached Mack to demonstrate his humour,
that great bird gave an inquiring turn to its head,
and its dehberate and unwinking eyes bid the rapid
play of its prescient mind. The man stopped, and
would speak but playfuUy. Nobody ever dared.
When Mack first boarded the ship, a group of us,
gloved, smothered him with a heavy blanket and
fastened a chain to his leg. He knew he was over
powered, and did not struggle, but inside the blanket
we heard some horrible chuckles. We took off the
blanket and stood back expectantly from that
disheveUed and puzzling giant of a parrot. He shook
his feathers flat again, quite self-contained, looked
at us sardonicaUy and murmured " Gur-r-r " very
distinctly ; then glanced at his foot. There was a
httle surprise in his eye when he saw the chain there.
He lifted up the chain to examine it, tried it, and
then quietly and easfly bit it through. " Gur-r-r ! "
he said again, straightening his vest, stiU regarding
us solemnly. Then he moved off to a davit, and
climbed the mizzen shrouds to the topmast.
When he saw us at food he came down with non
chalance, and overlooked our table from the cross

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 327
beam of an awning. Apparently satisfied, he came
directly to the mess table, sitting beside me, and
took his share with aU the assurance of a member,
aUowing me to idle with his beautiful wings and bis
taU. He was a beauty. He took my finger in his
awful bill and roUed it round fike a cigarette. I
wondered what he would do to it before he let it go ;
but he merely let it go. He was a great character,
magnanimously minded. I never knew a tamer
creature than Mack. That evening he rejoined a
flock of his wfid brothers in the distant tree-tops.
But he was back next morning, and put everlasting
fear into the terrier, who was at breakfast, by sud
denly appearing before him with wings outspread on
the deck, looking like a disrupted and angry rainbow,
and making raucous threats. The dog gave one yeU
and fell over backwards.
We had added a bull-frog to our pets, and he must
have weighed at least three pounds. He had neither
vice nor virtue, but was merely a squab in a shady
corner. Whenever the dog approached him he would
rise on his legs, however, and inflate himself tiU he
was globular. This was incomprehensible to Tinker,
who was contemptuous, but being a httle uncertain,
would make a circuit of the frog. Sitting one day
in the shadow of the box which enclosed the rudder
chain was the frog, and we were near, and up came
Tinker a-trot aU unthinking, his nose to the deck.
The frog hurriedly furnished his pneumatic act
when Tinker, who did not know froggie was there,
was close beside bim, and Tinker snapped sideways
in a panic. Poor punctured froggie dwindled in
stantly, and died.

328 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
I could add to the list of our creatures the anaconda
which was found coming aboard by the gangway
but that a stoker saw him first, became hysterical,
and slew the reptUe with a shovel ; there were the
coral snakes which came inboard over the cables
and through the hawse pipes, and the vampire bats
which frequented the forecastle. But they are in
significant beside our peccary. I forgot to teU you
the Skipper never made a tame creature of her.
She refused us. We brought her up from the bunkers
where first she was placed, because the stokers flatly
refused her society in the dark. She was brought
up on deck in bonds, snapping her tushes in a direful
way, and when released did most indomitably charge
all our ship's company, bristles up, and her automatic
teeth louder and more rapid than ever. How we
fled ! When I turned on my vantage, the manner
of my getting there all unknown, to see who was my
neighbour, it was my abashed and elderly captain,
who can look upon sea weather at its worst with an
easy eye, but who then was striving desperately to
get his legs (which were in pyjamas) ten feet above
the deck, in case the very wild pig below had wings.
After the peccary was released we could not call
the ship ours. We crept about as thieves. It was
fortunate that she always gave warning of her
proximity by making the noise of castanets with
her tusks, so that we had time to get elevated before
she arrived. But I never reaUy knew how fast she
could move tiU I saw her chase the dog, whom she
despised and ignored. One morning his valiant
barking at her, from a distance he judged to be
adequate, annoyed her, and she shot at him hke a

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 329
projectile. Her slender limbs and diminutive hooves
were those of a deer, and they became merely a haze
beneath her body, which was a flying passion. The
terrified dog had no chance, but just as she closed with
him her feet slipped, and so Tinker's hfe was saved.
Her end was pitiful. One day she got into the
saloon. The Doctor and I were there, and saw her
trot in at one door, and we trotted out at another
door. Now, the saloon was the pride of the Skipper ;
and when the old man tried to bribe her out of it —
he talked to her from the open skylight above — and
she insulted him with her mouth, he sent for his men.
From behind a shut door of the saloon alley way we
heard a fusilade of tusks in the saloon, shrieks from
the maddened dog, uproar from the parrots, and
the hoarse shouts of the crew. The pig was charg
ing ten ways at once. Stealing a look from the
cabin we saw the boatswain appear with a bunch of
cotton waste, soaked in kerosene, blazing at the end
of a bamboo, and the mate with a knife lashed to
another pole. The peccary charged the lot. There
broke out the cries of Tophet, and through chaos
champed insistently the high note of the tusks.
She was noosed and caged ; but nothing could be
done with the little fury, and when I peeped in at
her a few days later she was fuU length, and dying.
She opened one glazing eye at me, and snapped her
teeth slowly, game to the end.
......
March 6. — It was reported at breakfast that we
sail to-morrow. The bread was sour, the butter
was oil, the sugar was black with flies, the sausages
were tinned and very white and dead, and the bacon

330 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
was aU fat. And even the awning could not keep
the sun away.
March 7. — We got the hatches on number four
hold. It is reported we sad to-morrow.
March 8. — The ship was crowded this night with
the boys, for a last jollification. We fired rockets,
and swore enduring friendships with anybody, and
many sang different songs together. It is reported
that we sail to-morrow.
March 9. — It is reported that we sail to-morrow.
March 10.— The " CapeUa " has come to hfe. The
master is on the bridge, the first mate is on the fore
castle head, the second mate is on the poop, and the
engineers are below. There are stern and minatory
cries, and men who run. At the first slow clanking
of the cable we raised wUd cheers. The ship's body
began to tremble, and there was thunder under her
counter. We actuaUy came away from the jetty,
where long we had seemed a fixture. We got into
mid-stream — stopped; slowly turned tail on Porto
Velho. There was old man Jim, diminished on the
distant jetty, waving his hat. Porto Velho looked
strange again. Away we went. We reached the
bend of the river, and turned the corner. There was
the last we shaU ever see of Porto Velho. Gone !
The forest unfolding in reverse order seemed
brighter, and aU would have been quite weU, but
the fourth engineer came up from his duty, and feU
insensible. He was very yellow, and the Doctor
had work to do. Here was the first of our company
to succumb to the country.
• •••••
There were but six more days of forest ; for the

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 331
old "Capella," empty and light as a baUoon, the
coUisions with the floating timber causing muffled
thunder in her hoUpw body, came down the
swift floods of the Madeira and the Amazon rivers
" like a Cunarder, at sixteen knots," as the Skipper
said. And there on the sixth day was Para again,
and the sea near. Our spirits mounted, released
from the dead weight of heat and silence. But I was
to lose the Doctor at Para, for he was then to return
to Porto Velho, having discharged his duty to the
" CapeUa's " company. The Skipper took his waUet,
and we went ashore with him, he to his day-long
task of clearing his vessel, and we for a final sad
excursion. Much later in the day, suspecting an
unnameable evil was gathering to my undoing, I
caUed at the agent's office, and found the Skipper
had returned to the ship, that she was sailing that
night, and, the regulations of Para being what they
were, it being after six in the evening I could not
leave the city tiU next morning. My haggard and
dismayed array of thoughts broke in confusion and
left me gibbering, with not one idea for use. With
out saying even good-bye to my old comrade I took
to my heels, and left him ; and that was the last I
saw of the Doctor. (Aha ! my staunch support in
the long, hot and empty time at the back of things,
where were but trees, bad food, and a jest to brace
our souls, if ever you should see this — How ! — and
know, dear lad, I carried the damnable regulations
and a whole row of officials, the Union Jack at the
main, firing every gun as I bore down on them. I
broke through. Only death could have barred me
from my ship and the way home.)

332 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
Next morning we were at sea. We dropped the
pUot early and changed our course to the north,
bound for Barbados. Though on the line, the
difference in the air at sea, after our long enclosure
in the rivers of the forest, was keenly felt. And the
ship too had been so level and quiet ; but here she
was hvely again, fuU of movements and noises.
The bows were at their old difference with the sky
line, and the steady wind of the outer was driving
over us. Before noon, when I went in to the Chief,
my crony was flat and moribund with a temperature
at 105°, and he had no interest in this hfe whatever.
I had added the apothecary's duties to those of the
Purser, and here found my first job. (Doctor, I
gave him lots of grains of quinine, and lots more
afterwards ; and plenty of calomel when he was at
98 again. Was that all right ?)
The sight of the big and hearty Chief, when he
was about once more, yeUow, insecure, and some
what shrunken, made us dubious. Yet now were
we rolling home. She was breasting down into a
creaming smother, the seas were blue, and the world
was fresh and wide aU the way back. There was one
fine night, as we were climbing slowly up the slope of
the globe, when we hfted the whole consteUation of
the Great Bear, the last star of the taU just dipping
below the seas, straight over the " CapeUa's " bows,
as she pitched. Then were we assured affairs were
rightly ordered, and slept well and contented.
• • • • • ¦
Late one afternoon we sighted Barbados. The
sea was dark and the fight was golden. The island
did not look fike land. It was a faint but constant

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 333
pearl-coloured cloud. The empty sky came down
to the dark sea in bright walls which had but a
bloom of azure. Overhead it was day, but the
sea was fluid night. Above the island was a
group of cirrus, turned to the setting sun hke an
audience of intent faces. Near to starboard was a
white ship, fuUy rigged, standing towards the island
with royals set, and even a towering main skysail.
TaU as she was, she looked but a multiple cloud
which had dropped from the sky, and had settled
on the dark sea, and over it was drifting in a faint
air, buoyant, but unable to lift. We overhauled
that stately ship. She was reflecting the day-faU
from the white rounds of her many sails. She was
regal, she was paramount in her world, and the sun
seemed to be watching her, and shining solely for
her iUustrious progress. The clarity and the peace
of it was in us as we leaned against the raU, watching
Barbados grow, and watching that exalted ship.
" This is all right," said the Chief.
We were coming to the things we knew and under
stood. In the island near us were men, quays, and
shops. This evening had a familiar and friendly
look. Barbados at last! There would be some
thing to eat, too, and we kept talking of that. Do
you know what good bread and butter tastes like ?
Or mealy baked potatoes ? Or fruit from which the
juice runs when you bite ? Or crisp salads ? Not
you; not if you haven't hved for long on tinned
stuffs, bread which smelt like vinegar, and butter to
which a spoon had to be used.
To the door of the saloon alley way we saw the
steward come, and begin to swing his beU. " Tea

334 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
ho ! " said the mate. " Keep it," said the Chief.
" I know it. Sardines and hash. Not for me. We
shall get some grub in the morning. Oranges and
bananas, boys. I'm tired of oil. My belt is in by
three holes."
When the sun once touched the sea it sank visibly,
like a weight. Night came at once. We passed a
winking fight, and soon ahead of us in the dark
was grouped a multitude of lower stars. That was
Bridgetown. Tljiose stars opened and spread round
us, showing nothing of the waU of night in which
they were fixed. WeU, there it was. We could
smeU the good land. We should see it in the
morning. We had really got there.
The engines stopped. There was a shout from the
steamer's bridge and a thunderous rumbling as the
cable ran out, and then a remarkable quiet. The old
man came sideways down the bridge ladder with a
hurricane lamp, and stood with us, striking a light
for his cigar. " Here we are, Chief," he said. " What
about coals in the morning ? " The night was hot,
there was no wind, and as we sat yarning on the
bunker hatch another cluster of stars moved in
swiftly together, came to a stand near us, and a
peremptory gun was fired. That was the British
mad steamer.
We looked at her with awe. We could see the
toffs in evening dress idling in the glow of her electric
lights. What a feed they had just finished ! But
the greatest wonder of her deck was the women in
white gowns. We could hear the strange laughter
of the women, and listened for it. That was music
worth listening to. Our little mob of toughs in turns

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 335
used the night glasses on those Women, and in a dead
silence. There were some kiddies, too.
We were looking at the benign lights of the island
and trying to make out what they meant. The
sense of our repose, and the touch of those warm
and velvet airs, and the scent of land, were hke the
kindness and security of home. " I know this place,"
drawled Sandy. " I was here once. Before I went
into steam I used to come out to the islands, when
I was a young 'un. I made two voyages in the
" Chocolate Girl." She was my first ship. She was a
daisy, too. Once we lifted St Vincent twenty-five
days out of Liverpool. That was going, if you like.
If old Wager — he was the old man of the " Chocolate
Girl " — if he could only get a trip in a ship hke this,
fike an iron street with a factory stack in the middle !
But he can't. He's dead. He had the " Mignonette,"
and she went missing among the Bahamas. There's
miUions of islands in the Bahamas. They're north
of this place. You couldn't visit aU those islands
in a lifetime.
" If you ask me, some of the islands in these seas
are very funny. There's something wrong about a
few of them, They're not down in the chart, so I've
heard. One day you hft one, and you never knew
it was there. 'What's that?' says the old man.
'Can't make that place out.' Then he reckons he's
found new land, and takes his position. He caUs
it after his wife, and cables home what he's done.
The next thing is a gunboat goes there and beats
about and lays over the spot, but she doesn't find
no island. The gunboat cables home that the
merchant chap was drunk or something, and that

336 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
he steamed over the spot and got hundreds of
fathoms. They're always so clever, in the navy.
But I've heard some of these islands are not right.
You see one once, and nobody ever sees it again.
" I knew a man, and he was marooned on one of
those islands. He sailed with me afterwards on one
of the Blue Anchor steamers to Sydney. One time
he was on a craft out of Martinique for Cuba. She
was a schooner of the islands, and fine vessels they
are. You'U see a lot about us in the morning. This
man's name was Moffat — BiU Moffat. His schooner
had a mulatto for a master, and that nigger was a fool
and very superstitious, by all accounts. They ran
short of water, and it's pretty bad if you faU short
of water in these seas. Off the regular routes there's
nothing. You might drift for weeks, and see nothing,
off the track.
" Then they sighted an island. The mulatto chap
pretended he knew aU about that island. He said
he had been there before. But he was a har. It
was only a little island, like some trees afloat. They
came down on it, and anchored in ten fathoms and
waited for daylight.
" Next morning some wind freshened off shore,
and Moffat takes a nigger and rows to the beach.
There was only a light sweU breaking on the coral,
and landing was easy. Moffat told the nigger to
stay by the boat while he took a look round. There
was a bit of a coral beach with a pUe of high rocks
at the ends of it, hke pillars each side of a door-step.
What was inside the island Moffat couldn't see,
because at the back of the beach was a wood. He
said he heard a sound like a bird calling, but he

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 337
reckoned there wasn't a soul in that place. The
schooner was riding just off. He turned and was
crunching his way up the coral with the idea of
looking for a way inside. He got to the trees, and
then heard the nigger shout in a fright. The black
beggar was pushing out the boat. He got in it too,
and began rowing back to the schooner as if some
body was coining after him.
" Moffat yeUed, and ran down to the surf, but the
nigger kept right on. There was Moffat up to his
knees in the water, and in a fine state. The boat
reached the schooner — and now, thinks Moffat,
there'U be trouble Do you know what happened
though ? For a httle while nothing happened
Then they began to haul in her cable. She up-
anchored and stood out. That's a fact. Bill told
me he felt pretty sick when he saw it. He didn't
like the look of it. He watched the schooner turn
tail, and soon she found more wind and got out of
sight past the island, close-hauled. He watched her
dance past one of the pfles of rock tiU there was
nothing but empty sea behind the rock. Then his
eye caught something moving on the rock. Some
thing moved round it out of his sight. He never
saw what it was. He wished he had.
"WeU, he had a pretty bad time. He couldn't
find anyone on the island, in a manner of speaking.
But somebody was always going round a corner, or
behind a tree. He caught them out of the tail of
his eye. He said it was enough to get on a man's
nerves the way that thing always just wasn't there,
whatever it was. ' Curse the goats,' BiU used to say
to himself.

338 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
" One day BiU was strolling round figuring out what
he could do to that mulatto when he met him again,
and then he found a sea cave. He went in. It was
a siUy thing to do, because the way in was so low
that he had to crawl. But the cave was big enough
inside for a music-hall. The walls ran up into a
vault, and the water came up to the bottom of the
walls nearly all round. The water was like a green
light. A bright hght came up through the water,
and the reflections were wriggling all over the rocks,
making them seem to shake. The water was hke
thick glass full of light. He could see a long way
down, but not to the bottom. While he was looking
at it the water heaved up quietly fuU three feet, and
the reflections on the walls faded. Then he saw the
hole through which he had crawled was gone. ' Now,
BiU Moffat, you're in a regular mess,' he says to
himself. " He dived for the hole. But he never found that
way out, and the funny thing was he couldn't come
to the top again. Bill saw it was a proper case that
time, and no more Sundays in Poplar. He was
surprised to find that the deeper he went the thinner
the water was. It was thin and clear, like electric
hght. He could see miles there, and down he kept
falling till he hit the bottom with a bang. It seared
a lot of fishes, and they flew up hke birds. He
looked up to see them go, and there was the sun
overhead, only it was hke a bright round of green
jeUy, aU shaking. BiU found it was dead easy to
breathe in water that was no thicker than air, so he
got up, brushed the sand off, and looked round. A
flock of fishes flew about him quite friendly, and as

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 339
beautiful as Amazon parrots. A big crab walked
ahead, and BiU thought he had better follow the
crab. " He came to a path which was marked with shells,
and at the end of the path he saw the fore half of a
ship up-ended. While he was looking at it, some
body pushed the curtains from the hatchway, and
came out, and looked at him. ' Good lord, it's Davy
Jones,' said Bill to himself.
"'HuUo, Bill,' said Davy. 'Come in. Glad
to see you, BUI. What a time you've been.'
" Moffat said that Davy wasn't a decent sight,
having barnacles aU over his face. But he shook
hands. ' You're hand is quite cold, Bill,' said Davy.
' Did you lose your soul coming along ? You nearly
did that before, BiU Moffat. You nearly did it that
Christmas night off Ushant. I thought you were
coming then. But not you. But here you are at
last aU right. Come in ! Come in ! '
" Bill went inside with Davy. There was sea junk
all over the place. ' I find these things very handy,
old chap,' said Davy to Bill seeing he was looking
at them. ' It's good of you to send them down,
though I don't fike the iron, for it won't stand the
chmate. See that old hat ? It's a Spanish admirals,
I clap it on, backwards, whenever I want to go ashore.'
" So they sat down, and yarned about old times,
though BiU told me that Davy seemed to remember
people after everybody else had forgotten them,
which was confusing. ' Oh, yes,' Davy would say,
'old Johnson. Yes. He used to talk of me in a
rare way. He was a dog, was Johnson. I've heard
him, many a time. But he's changed since his ship

340 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
came downstairs. He's a better man. He's not so
funny as he was.'
" Then they had a pipe, and after a bit things
began to drag. ' Come into the garden, BiU,' said
Davy. ' Come and have a look round.'
" AU round the garden Bill noticed the name-
boards of ships nailed up. Some of the names BUI
knew, and some he didn't, being Spanish. 'What
do you think of my coUection ? ' said Davy. ' Ever
seen as fine a one ? I lay you never have ! '
" Then they came to a door. * Come in,' said Davy.
' This is my locker. Ever heard of my locker ? '
" BiU said it was pretty dark inside. Just hght
enough to see. But there was only miles and miles
of crab-pots, all set out in rows, with a label on each.
' What do you think of that lot, BiU ? ' asked Davy.
' I shaU have to get larger premises soon.' Bill
choked a bit, for the place smelt stale and seaweedy.
' What's in the crab-pots, Davy ? ' said BiU.
" ' Souls ! ' said Davy. ' But there's a lot of
trash, though now and then I get a good one. Here,
now. See this ? This is a fine one, though I mustn't
teU you where I got it. And people said he hadn't
got one. But I knew better, and there it is.'
" But BiU couldn't see anything in the pots. He
could only hear a rusthng, as if something was
rubbing on the wicker, or a twittering. At last Davy
eame to a new pot. ' Do you know who's in this
one, Bill,' he said. But BiU couldn't guess. ' WeU,
BiU, it's your soul, and a poorer one I never see. It
was hardly worth setting the pot for a soul like that.'
Then Davy began to shake the pot, and soon got wild.
' Here, where the deuce has that soul gone,' he

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 341
said, and put his ear to the bars. Then he put the
pot down and made a rush at BiU, to get it back ;
but BiU jumped backwards, got through the door,
ran through the house, grabbed the admiral's cocked
hat, and clapped it on backwards. Then he shot
out of the water at once, and found himself on the
rocks outside the cave, with the cocked hat stUl
on his head. He's kept that hat ever since, and
money wouldn't buy it."
• »...,
When I woke next morning it was like waking
to a great occasion. The tropic sun was blazing
outside. The day seemed of a superior quality.
An old negress shuffled by my cabin door,
through which was a peep of the town across the
harbour, and she had some necklaces of shells strung
on one skinny black arm and carried a basket of
oranges on the other. I jumped up, and bought aU
the oranges. A boat came to our gangway and some
of us went ashore. I don't know what a man feels
like who is released one fine day from imprisonment
into the stream of his feUows, but I should think
he is first a little stunned, and afterwards becomes
like a child's balloon in a breeze. The people we had
met in the BrazUs never laughed ; and I myself had
always felt that there we had been watched and
foUowed unseen, that something was there, watching
us, waiting its time, knowing weU it could get us
before we escaped.
We were at last outside it and free. The anchor
age of Bridgetown seemed anarchic, after our level
sombre experience, for the sea was a green light,
flashing and volatile, with white schooners driving upon

342 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
it, negroes shouting and laughing over the bulwarks,
or frantically hauling on the sheets. The rushing
water was crowded with leaping boats, all gaudily
painted ; and even the sunshine, moving rapidly
on quivering white sails and the white huUs buoy
antly swinging, was a kind of shaking laughter.
Our negro boatmen sang as they rowed, when they
were not swearing at other boatmen. The world
had got wine in its head.
We went to the Ice House, and bought Enghsh
beer. (Oh, the taste of beer !) In the brisk and sunny
streets there were Enghsh women, cool, dainty, a
little haughty, their dresses smelhng of new linen,
and they were looking in at shop windows. We had
got our feet down on home pavements, and the streets
had the newness and sparkle of hohday. " Hi, cabby !
He drove us along coral roads, under cocoanut
palms, and there were golden hiUs (hUls once more !)
one way, and on the other hand was a beach glowing
hke white fire, with a sea beyond of a blue that
was ultimate, profound, and as tense and as still
as rapture. We came to a hotel where there was stiff
napery, with creases in it, on a breakfast table.
There was a sUver coffee-pot. There was sweet-
smelling and crusty bread, butter in ice, and new
milk. There was a heaped plate of fruit. There
was a crystal jug fiUed with cold water and sunshine,
and it threw a wavering fight on the damask.
We had some of everything. We ate for more
than an hour, steadily. A man could not have done
it alone, and without shame. There was one superior
lady tourist, with grey curls on her cheeks and a
face hke doom, and she sent for the manager, and

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 343
asked if we were to breakfast there again. She
wanted to know. The Chief begged me, as the
youngest of the party, to go over and kiss her. But
I pointed out that, seeing where we had come from,
and what we had suffered, it was the plain duty of
any really dear old soul to come over and kiss us on
a morning like that.
......
In the afternoon we were aboard again, waiting
for the Skipper to return with the new orders. To
what part of the world would the power in LeadenhaU
Street now consign us ? Sandy thought New Orleans ;
but we could rule that out, for there was no cotton
just then. Pensacola was more likely, the Chief
said, with a deck cargo of lumber for Hamburg.
That guess made the crowd glum. Winter in the
Atlantic, she rolling her heart out, and the timber
that was level with the engine-room casing groaning
and straining at every roU — to dweU on that prospect
was to feel a cold draught out of the VaUey of Shadows.
Two nigger boys were overside, diving for coins.
You threw a coin — BrazU's nickel muck, a handful
worth nothing — and it went below osculating, as
though sentiently dodging the contorted and con
vulsive figure of the boy diving after it. The trans
parency of the fathoms was that of a denser air.
When the sea was still, at the slack of the tides,
this tropic anchorage was not hke water. You did
not look upon it, but into it, being hardly aware of
its surface. It was surprising to see our massive iron
plates stand upright in it. We were stiU an ugly
black bulk, as we were on the ditch water of Swansea,
but our sea wagon had lost its look of squat heavi-

§44 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
ness. Even our iron ship was transmuted, such
was the hft and radiance of Barbados and its sea,
into the buoyancy of the unsubstantial stuff of
that scene about us, the low hiUs of greenish gold
so delicate under the sky of malachite blue that
you doubted whether mortals could walk there.
Bridgetown was between those hiUs and the sea, a
cluster of white cubes, with inconsequential touches
of scarlet, orange, and emerald. Beneath our keel
was a boy who might have been flying there.
On one side of the town was a belt of coral beach.
It was a-fire, and the palms above the beach, with
their secretive villas, and the green-gold hills beyond,
floated on that white glow. The sea below the beach
was an incandescent green; it might have been
burning through contact with the island. Then the
sea spread down to us in areas of opaque violet and
blue, tiU in the neighbourhood of the ship it became
transparent and was but a denser atmosphere. You,
in the hard and bitter north, on the exposed summit
of the world where Polaris glitters in the forehead of
a frozen god, hardly know what young and luscious
stuff this earth is, where the constant sun and tepid
rains and salt air have preserved its bloom and flush
of abounding life.
There came the Skipper's boat, he in his shore-
going white ducks and Panama hat in the stern
sheets, his wallet in his hand. He knew that we
aU looked at him with assumed indifference, when he
stepped among us on deck. That was his time to
show he was the ship's master. He feigned that we
were not there. He turned to the chief mate : " AU
ready, Mr Brown ? " "All ready, sir." Then the

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 345
master walked slowly, knowing our eyes were on his
back, to his place aft, first going in to speak to the
Chief. The Chief came out some minutes after.
" Tampa, boys," said he. " Florida for phosphate,
then home."
That evening we were on our way, and turned
inwards through the line of the Caribbees, passing
between the islands of St Lucia and St Vincent, high
purple masses of rock, St Lucia's mass ascending
into cones. The Skipper had been to most of the
West Indian islands, and remembered them, while I
listened. We stood at the chart-room door, watching
the islands across the evening seas. The sun, just
above the sharply dark rim of ocean, touched the
sea, and sank. A thin paring of sUver moon had
the sky to itself. I went into the chart-room ; and
the old man who, grim and sour as you might tliink
him, mellows into confidential friendliness when he
has you to himself, spread his charts of the Spanish
Main under the yellow lamp, which was a slow
pendulum as she rolled, and he put his spectacles
on his lean brown face, talked of unfrequented cays,
and of the negro islands, and debated which route we
should take.
The fourth morning at breakfast-time, was a burn
ing day, with a sky almost cloudless, and a slow sea
which had the surface of its rich blue deeps shot with
turquoise lights, while fields of saffron gulf-weed
stained it ; and we had, close over our port bow, the
most beautiful island in the world. It is useless to
deny it, and to declare you know a better island. Can't
I see Jamaica now ? I see it most plain. It descends
abruptly from the meridian, pinnacles and escarp-

346 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
ments trembling in the upper air with distance and
dehcate poise, and comes down in rolling forests and
steep verdant slopes, where facets of bare rock
glitter, to more leisurely open glades and knolls ;
and then, being not far from the sea, drops in sheer
cliffs to where the white combers pulse. It is a
jewel which smeUs like a flower. The " Capella "
went close in till Port Antonio under the Blue Moun
tains was plain, and though I could see the few
scattered houses, I could not see the narrow ledges
where men could stand in such a steep land. We
crawled over the blue floor in which that sea mountain
is set, and cruised along, feeling very smaU, under the
various and towering shape. For long I watched it,
declaring continually that some day I must return.
(And that is the greatest compliment a traveller on
his way home can pay to any spot on earth.)
It faded as we drew northwards. Over seas to
the north was a long low stratum of permanent cloud,
and beneath it was the faint presentiment of Cuba.
StiU we were in the spell of the very halcyon weather
of old tales, with the world our own, though once
this day there was a great rain burst, and the
" CapeUa " was lost in falling water, her syren
blaring. We neared the Cuban coast by the Isle of
Pines, a pallid desert shore, apparently treeless and
parched. The next morning we came to the western
cape of the island, rounding it in company with a
white island schooner, its crew of toughs watching
us from her shadeless deck ; and changed our course
almost due north.
Now we were in the Gulf of Mexico, and soon
upset its notoriously uncertain temper, for a " norther"

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 347
met us and piped till it was a full gale, end -on, and
it kicked up a nasty sea which flung about the empty
" Capella " fike a band-box. There was a night of it.
Towards morning it eased up, and I woke to a serene
sunrise, and found we were in the pale green water
of coral soundings, with the Floridan pilot even then
standing in to us, his tug bearing centrally on its
bridge a gilded eagle with rampant wings. In a
little whue we were fast to the quarantine quay at
MuUet Island, detained as a yellow fever suspect.
The medical officers boarded us, ranged amidships
the " Capella's " crowd from the master down, and
put in the mouth of each of us a thermometer ;
and so for a time we stood ridiculously smoking glass
cigarettes. One stoker was put aside, for he had a
temperature. Then into the cabins, and the saloon,
the forecastle, and into the holds, were put gallipots
of burning sulphur, and the doors were closed. We
became a great and dreadful stench; and I went
ashore. There was a deserted beach of comminuted shells,
its glare as bright as snow in sunshine. It was
Uttered with the relics of old wrecks, with sea rubbish,
and the carapaces of crabs. Beyond the beach was
a calcareous desert, with a scrub of palmetto and
evergreen, and patches of flowering coreopsis and
blue squiUs. Hidden by the scrub were shallow
lagoons. It is hard to teU the sea from the land in
warm and aqueous Florida, for sea and land so
invade each other's dominions. Water and land
were asleep in the sun. I was alone in the island,
and sat in a decaying boat by the shore of a lagoon
where nothing moved but the little crabs playing

348 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
hide and seek in the moist crevices of the boat, and
the pelicans which sat round the interminable flat
shores. Sometimes the pelicans woke, and yawned,
and fanned the heat with great slow wings.
In the early afternoon we were allowed to proceed
to Tampa, which we reached in three hours ; and
there we came once more to the press of the busy and
indifferent world. The muddle of roofs and steeples
of a great city were about us, and men met us and
talked to us, but they had no leisure for interest in the
wonders of the strange land from which we had come,
and would not have cared if afterwards we were
going to Gehenna. We made fast under a new
structure of timber and iron which was something
between a flour mill and the Tower of Babel, for it
was wan and powdered, and full of strange noises;
and it had a habit of eating, in a mechanical way,
an interminable length of railway trucks, wagon after
wagon, one every minute. A great weariness and
yearning filled me that night. The strangulating
fumes of the sulphur clung to aU the cabin, and
puffed in clouds from the pillow when I changed
sides ; for the wagons clanked and banged tiU day
light. I sat up and beat my breast, and swore I
would leave her and go home. The next morning
that inexplicable structure beside us began from
many mouths to vomit floods of powdered phos
phate into us, and the " Capella," in and out,
turned pale through an almost impalpable dust.
Everybody took bronchitis and cursed Tampa and
its phosphate.
I spoke to the Skipper and the Chief about it, and
they agreed that nobody would stop with her now,

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 349
who could leave her ; but that yet was I no pal to
desert them. What about them? They had yet
to see her safe across the most ruthless of seas at a
time when its temper would be at its worst ; and
what about them ? Though they admitted that,
were they in my case, they would certainly take the
train to New York, and catch there the fastest
steamer for England. Then come with me to the
British Consul fike an honest man, said I to the
captain, and get me off your articles.
The three of us left her, I for the last time. I
turned upon the " CapeUa," and the boys stood
leaning on her taffraU watching me ; and I am not
going to put down here what I felt, nor what the lads
cried to me, nor what I said when I stood beneath
her counter, and caUed up to them. We came to a
corner by a warehouse, and I turned to look upon the
" Capella " for the last time.
Tampa, the noisy city about us, was rawly new,
most of its site but lately a shallow lagoon, and one
of its natives, the ship's agent who was entertaining
us at lunch, did not fail to impress that enterprise
and industry upon us with great earnestness. Tampa
was a large, hasty, makeshift standing of dep6ts,
railway sidings, cigar factories, wharves, and huge
elevators which could load I forget how many thou
sands of tons of bulk cargo into a steamer in twelve
hours, as though she were an iron bucket under a
pump. A town spontaneous unexpected and com
plete, with a hurrying population in its sidewalks,
pushing to secure foothold in life, and not a
book-shop there, and no talk but in its saloons
and commercial exchanges. We went into many of

350 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
those saloons, the Skipper, and the Chief, and the
late Purser, shaking hands for the last time in each,
and then dropping into another to recall old affairs ;
and shaking hands finally again, and so to the next
bar. That night I was alone in Tampa, with a torrent
of urgent affairs surging past. I could not find the
raflway station. Standing at a corner, outside a
tobacconist's shop, a huge corridor train shaped
among the hghts of the street, trundled down the
centre of the roadway, then edged close to the side
walk, bumping past a row of shops as casuaUy as a
tram for a penny journey, and stopped just where
I stood with a hand-bag wondering how I was to get
to New York. New York was a thousand miles
away. The train was but a mere episode of the
open street, and I could not feel it bore out the
promise of my railway vouchers. This train, a row
of lighted viUas in motion, came down the roadway,
out of nowhere, while carts and women with market
baskets waited for it to pass, stopped outside a
tobacconist's shop, and the light of the shop window
iUuminated a round of a huge wheel which stood
higher than my head. The wheel came to rest upon
an abandoned newspaper. A negro was passing me,
and I stopped him. " Noo Yark ? Step aboard
right now ! " His word was all I had to go upon
that this train would take me to the precise point
in a continent I did not know. A struggle for exist
ence eddied fiercely round the train, and assuming it
was the right train, and I missed it — it was an un
bearable thought ! The train had to be mounted.
It was like chmbing a wall ; but I would have cast

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 351
my luggage, scaled more than walls, and dealt con
clusively with any obstruction if the way home left
me no other choice. The traveller who has been in
the wilds and has lived with the barbarous, though
he has not allowed his thoughts to look back there,
yet he knows something of that eagerness which
dumb things feel when he turns about. I took my
train on trust, as one does so many things in the
United States, found we should really get to New
York, in time, and lay listening to the beat of the
flying wheels beneath my berth ; tried to count their
pulse, and fell asleep.
There were some more days and nights, and all
the passengers of the earlier stages of the journey
had passed away. Then the train slowed through
imperceptible gradations, and stopped. I thought
a cow was on the hne. But the negro attendant
came to me and told me to get out. This was New
York. Outside there was a street in the rain, the
stones were deep with yellow reflections, and some
cabmen stood about in shiny capes. No majestic
figure of Liberty met me. A cab met me, on a rainy
night. • •••••
It was on one of those huge liners, and the steward
told him they would reach Plymouth in the morning.
He was packing up his things in his cabin. England
to-morrow ! The things went into his trunks in the
lump, with a compressing foot after each. It did
not matter. AU the clothes were in ruins. The
only care he took was with the toucans brilliant
skins, the bundle of arrows, the biscuit tins full of
butterflies— they would excite the Boy— and the

352 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
barbaric Indian ornaments for Miss Muffet and the
Curly Nob ; how their eyes would shine. His
telegram from Plymouth would surprise them. They
did not know where he was.
But he knew, when they did not, that there was
but one more day to tick off the calendar to complete
the exue. He had turned back that day to the
earlier pages of the diary and found some iUuminating
entries ; " Gone," or " That's another," were written
across some spaces which otherwise were blank. It
was curious that those cryptic entries recalled the
hours they stood for more vividly to his mind than
those which had happenings minutely recorded. He
threw the diary into a trunk ; the long job was
finished. The sunshine all that day was different from the
weU remembered burning weight of the tropics. It
was a frail and grateful spring warmth, and the
incidence of its rays was happy and iUuminating,
as though the hght had only just reached the world,
and so things looked just discovered and interesting.
A faint silver haze hung upon a pallid sea, and
the slow smooth mounds of water were fuU of
fugitive ghnts and flashes. You hardly knew the
sea was there. The mist was the luminous nimbus
of a new world, a world not yet fully formed,
for it had no visible bounds. Night came, and a
nearly fuU moon, and the only reafity was the
stupendous bulk of the hner. She might have
been in the clouds, herself a dark cloud near the
moon, with but rumours of fight in the aerial
deeps beneath. It seemed another of the dreams.
Would he wake up presently to the reality of the

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE 353
forest, with the sun blazing on the enamel of its
hard foliage ?
He wanted some assurance of time and space.
He would stay on deck tiU the first sign came of
England. So he leaned motionless for hours on the
rail of the boat-deck, gazing ahead, where the out
look remained as unshapen as it had since he left
home. Far on the port bow appeared the headlight
of a steamer.
He watched that light. This, then, was no dream
sea. Others were there. But was it a headlight ?
. . . No!
The Bishop's ! England now !
The steward came again, peeping through his
curtain, and said, " Plymouth, sir ! " and turned on
the glow lamp, for it was not yet dawn. There was
an early breakfast laid in the saloon ; but he went
on deck. The liner had hardly way on her ; the
water was but uncoiling noiselessly alongside. There
were shapes of hiUs near, with viUas painted on
them, but so bluish and immaterial was all that it
might have rippled like the flat water, being but a
flimsy background which could be easily shaken.
The lulls drew nearer imperceptibly, grew higher.
A touch of real day gave a hiU-top body ; and there
was a confident shout from somebody unseen in plain
Enghsh. The vision grounded and got substance.
Not only home, but spring in Devon.
From the train window the countryside in the
tones and flush of the renascence absorbed him. He
went from side to side of the carriage. What was
most extraordinary was the sparsity and lowness of
the trees and bushes, the fineness of the growth.

354 THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
The outhnes of the trees could be seen, and they
crouched so near to the ground and were so very
meagre. The colours were faint enough to be but
tinted mists. The biggest of the trees were manage
able, looked like toys. The orderly hedges, the clean
roads, the geometrical patterns of the fields, gave
him assurance once more of order and security.
Here was law again, and the permanence of .affairs
long decided upon. He closed his eyes, sinking into
the cushions of the carriage as though the arms
under him were proved friendly and could be
trusted. . . .
The slowing of the train woke him. They were
running into Paddington. He got his feet fair and
sohd on London before the train stopped, and looked
into the crowd waiting there. A flushed youngster
ran towards him out of a group, then stopped shyly.
He caught The Boy, and held him up. . . . Here
again was the centre of the world.

the end

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