A WAR-TIME VOYAGE BY THE SAME AUTHOR MY VAGABONDAGE SEA-PIE EPISTLES FROM DEEP SEAS ETC. ETC. A WAR-TIME VOYAGE BEING THE ITINERARY OF AN OCEAN-TRAMP FROM PORT TO PORT 1916-17 \ BY J. E. PATTERSON 1918 LONDON y TORONTO J. M. DENT & SONS LTD. NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON W CO. All rights reserved Vi.cl.cL TO SIR EDWARD NICHOLL, R.N.R. TO WHOM I AM INDEBTED FOR THE VOYAGE RE CORDED HEREIN Dear Sir Edward, — How shall one begin to write a book ? Momentous question ! — fit almost to rank with Pilate's, and quite so to the writer himself when he, or she, is faced by the problem and can see a dozen different solutions — such as they are. Wherever you be there are so many ways to Rome, straight or round-about ; but only the one for you, if you're an individualist. And even if you have been there on other occasions, each time finding a way that suited you, it doesn't say that you will do the same when next you go. In fact, the more often you have been there, the more difficult it becomes to discover a new track for each journey. Here I am pulled up by the fact that my simile has run out of keeping. And being so intolerant a lover of justice, of the whole truth being stated- on both sides, I must needs point out that in going to Rome, whether you start east, west, north, or south, you have only the known countries — unchanging in your time — through which to travel. And although you go by air, sea, or land, valley or mountain, railway, road, or unbeaten path, you're bound to vi A WAR-TIME VOYAGE find a sameness on the second journey by any one of the ways. On the other hand every book of reminiscences — even if not every other book — is, or should be, the expression of a mood ; and every true literary mood is too distinctive for Nature to repeat it. As all intuitive women, and some men, know, a creative atmosphere once lost is never properly recovered; a part, or a semblance, of it may be ; but the whole thing, the original, never is. {By the way, I am assured that the same holds good in art and music. And the psychic, mental — if the brain is anything more than a transmitting agent in the matter — and physical aspects and connections of creative moods and their origins should form a most entertaining and possibly an instructive discussion.) And this is where my rebellious simile shoots off at a tangent from its former parallel. As a book is an elongated expression of a passing mood — a lengthy fabric, say, of an individualist pattern and set of colours, into which certain experiences, physical and mental, are woven — and as no such mood is repeated with any degree of exactness ; then, if it be a true one and caught at the right moment, it is that entirely new way to the goal which can't be found to Rome after a dozen or more journeys. And the same holds good even if the human agent has, so to write, been there A WAR-TIME VOYAGE vii a hundred times before. And if he, or she, had — how awful ! Fancy being the perpetrator of a hun dred books ! Imagination staggers at such an unspeakable enormity ! You mutter: "Factory," get a sense of oil, whirring machinery, and collapse. But is it a true mood, the mood ? Does it give the one, right atmosphere to clothe the subject ? Only the God-given intuition of the genius, or the faith of the momentarily inspired, can tell that. And alas that so few are chosen out of the many who are called ! Ninety per cent, of us can't pick the true from the false ; so I come back to the query : How shall one begin to write his book ? The methods are about as many as the denominational ways to Heaven — or to that Hereafter which is Heaven, whatever the spelling may be. There is the manner historical, either of place, persons, or both, in which you proceed leisurely [like the independent salesman who knows the value of the good article on which he has just put a fair price) to paint in every line, light and shade of your locale, your personnel, and how they came to be who and what they are — on the page. On the other side of the board, as it were, you have the slap-dash method of flouting the unwritten laws of literature by leading off with some arresting morsel of person ality — words, actions, or both — which, according to viii A WAR-TIME VOYAGE all the designs of logic and construction, should appear some further pages on in the book, often even in the second chapter. As most men, some women and a portion of Macaulay' s schoolboys are aware, this is done for the flagrant, and generally undisguisable, purpose of securing your reader's attention the instant he, or she, claps sight on your opening lines. Then, having gained your be-all by this old ruse, you proceed, maybe as leisurely as the more honest craftsman, or woman, to inform your reader of the byegone whys and wherefores of the situation — and often with but small attention to the fact that this method has landed you into the complicating niceties and reiterations of a past within a past. There is also the mysterious beginning, in which you write a page or two of quasi-symbolism {possibly with your tongue in your cheek, and possibly with all faith in its honesty) that may have some subtle connection with the stars, the waters under the earth, a very nebulous Hereafter, or, more distantly, even with life or the book of which it forms the opening. But it doesn't matter whether your mysticism {call it what you please) has anything or nothing to do with one or all of these things, so be that you have interested the reader. Then, in direct opposition there is the chatty, good-fellowship sort of commence ment, wherein you lead off with an ingenuously A WAR-TIME VOYAGE ix artful appearance of taking him, or her, by the buttonhole {if one may do so with an unknown woman even in these days and on paper), leading the way to a cosy and secluded corner and there becoming genially confidential. Another method is the slap-bang — different from the slap-dash in that it " speaks right on," as the artful and designing Antony said he was doing, when he knew so well that he was doing nothing of the sort, and didn't intend to. This is also different inasmuch as it is nothing if not virile — muscular, with the muscles all laid bare, or in bold alto-relievo ; as though it were afraid that its force would be unnoticed if it didn't shout from the house-tops, or keep up a great sky-advertisement: "Look, I am strong I " This method never sees that it throws away all the graces, the use of some of which would make its strength no less apparent, but all the more believable. Not to make this dissertation a catalogue of the ways of beginning to write a book, I will turn aside to suggest that an atmosphere, suitable and continu ous, cannot be had by setting off with dialogue. It was atmosphere that I meant in my opening ques tion : In what manner shall one start out, so that from the beginning he creates the Hght atmosphere ? — And has not some one said that atmosphere is the A WAR-TIME VOYAGE individualism of literature ? If not, then some big light ought to have said it. Well, this was my trouble : How, from a mass of notes, long and short, brief chapters and what not, shall I make a connected whole with a character — an atmosphere — of its own ? Here I have an olla-podrida, a jumble of things — human, natural, active, speculative, etc. — how shall I fuse them into a piece ? Finally I decided to let it go largely as it stood, merely lengthen ing a note here and one there as a link between two more complete pieces. In this I may be wrong, although.it is on the side of the gods for truth and freshness. Be assured there are those who will say that the thing should have all been recast and rewritten ; that my itinerary should have raked in the whole ship's company, and have made every man a separate embodiment of tragedy or humour, the latter preferred. Others of the critical will say other things, a hundred to one. But whether they do or not, my first purpose was to make a faithful record, use what incidents, etc., I could without hurt or offence. And being one who scorns either to try to paint the lily or to turn fact to fiction — in an effort of this sort — such as it is I offer it to you. Yours sincerely, f. E. P. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE The prescription: to sea again — Slaves of vagabondage — Nature's greatest paradox — God's incompleted acme — A begetter of visions — Odd thoughts . . . . i CHAPTER II Leaving port — Mysterious regulations — Making ready — Down Channel — Cool bravery — Some of my shipmates — The master : a brief view — Away : lightless .... 8 CHAPTER III A breeze — An unpleasant remark — Our packet — Retrospec tions and observations — Changes in the Merchant Service — Not war conditions — Lack of romance in youth to-day — Too much like America — Then and now — An interruption — Cogitations resumed — Another break . . . .24 CHAPTER IV Captain Dash, after some study — A " caf-astrophe " — Writing in a 22-degree roll — A startler — Trouble in the bathroom — An unwelcome " joke " — A black night and a tremen dous sea — A phenomenal roll — Hove-to — Next morning, some ballast gone, but weather finer — Query: Bermuda? — Misapplied satire — Ocean-borne literature — A delightful " company " 39 xi xii A WAR-TIME VOYAGE CHAPTER V PAGE To believe or not believe — Disruptions aboard — A Sefior — A significant fact — Keeping out of trouble — An interruption — The " Prince " again — Undeserved tolerance — " The Duke of Bei-mondsey " — A " hero " and his degradation to-be 55 CHAPTER VI A vain search — Oddments and a rumour — Bad weather and a native trait — A hope of better things — Away! — Some boatmen and me — A guide's information — An island " 'bus " — On the road — A genial cicerone — Bermudian details — Dollars, shillings and some personal expressions — A foolish error ... ... 64 CHAPTER VII On the road again — A disappointment — A side-track to beauty — An abomination — Peeping into fairy-land — Tom Moore, a pleasing failure and a reverie — Anxious waiting — Out of place — -A ship-chandler's ways of thinking — Charmingly entertained — A comparison — Old Maids' Alley by moon light — A lovely morning — More anxious waiting — An unwelcome " welcome " . . . . . .78 CHAPTER VIII A pitiful case — " Features " — The Delaware — Some Phila- delphian points — And the women: some of them — No international politics — War-time conditions — An invita tion — The " Mummers' Parade "¦ — I retire — Joked or not joked — A good Samaritan — A search and a " find " — ¦ Jolly company — An awkward meeting — Crew items — Another invitation — Loaded . . . . .98 CHAPTER IX An insular American — The Prince's boots — "Sealed" orders — Rumours of raiders — "Cheek" — Reduced to " Chips " — In the raider's latitudes — The tragedy of a joke — Some friendly personalities — Discussions and a pearl — Danger-zone frivolities . . . . .120 A WAR-TIME VOYAGE xiii CHAPTER X PAGE Out of summer into winter — Persistency — A queer notion, and a better one — At Gibraltar — Unconscionable delay — Anchored at last — Formalities and the bum-boat — Odd thoughts — " Rock " items — A breeze and a smashed boat — Oran — The supporter of the family — An African hail storm — Unfair advantage — A surprise and a startler . 135 CHAPTER XI Italy — A glance back — Castellamare and passports — A question of francs — What a motley team! — Away: on an Italian road!— Rags on high — Ten centimes for luck — Beggars — A ruse — The road abandoned — Sorrento — The square on a saint's day — Villa Crawfurd . . . . .158 CHAPTER XII A major-domo and information — Studying character — Broad sides — A verbal engagement— Buying mementoes — More character-studying — Captain Dash and my purchases — Castellamare's mean streets and a "cake house" — An outing party — Merchant Jack and a " carriage " — -Bread and garlic — " Ze bes' room " ..... 173 CHAPTER XIII Instances of kindness — Odds and ends — U-boats at work — Escorts that don't guard — A foolish practice — Algiers " the white " — Trouble at the quay — The density of officialism — An order and a refusal — Arrested — More intelligence — A bright, informing luncheon-party — Catching U-boats — Matters in Algiers — A rumour — Touring the town — The mingling of white and brown — Soldiers' pastimes — The value of an " Autorisation "..... 194 CHAPTER XIV A cause for alarm — My edition of the master's influenza — Gibraltar again — Terrific weather and more needless delay — A medicine-man's advice — An incident — What a fleet! — Taciturnity — Arguments and a better understanding — Improved health — Still creeping south .... 215 xiv A WAR-TIME VOYAGE CHAPTER XV PAGE Rio de la Plata ! — Some items— That painful incident again — More of the river — A superlative sunset — Rosario, as a town and otherwise — War-changes — " They've had you, Purser" — Ship-chandler, thy name is Rogue — River- water, and a run on the medicine-chest — A much-envied man — Bound to London ! — Freak-craft — Monte Video and the war's effects on it . ... 229 CHAPTER XVI An impossible raider — Lost excitement — No tobacco — A great day for me — Artist and public — A black men's fight — Kindly sarcasm — A literary discussion, and a truth dis covered — The Prince a-begging — Wreckage — The sheep at the fold — Within the gates . ... 247 ' Unless literature is personal it has no stimulating value.'' Edmund Gosse. A WAR-TIME VOYAGE CHAPTER I The prescription : to sea again — Slaves of vagabondage — Nature's greatest paradox — God's incompleted acme — A begetter of visions — Odd thoughts. And so I must away to sea again. Those men (four of them) of stethoscopes, grave faces, and family secrets have said it, one after the other; have said that only the sea can save me, or rather make physical life once more worth living — per- adventure no U-boat comes with a possibility of making matters worse. However, the choice is mine, the chance about one in two thousand, and the end of it is on the lap of the gods, who are not always unkind. Desperate diseases are — but, as Hamlet said, the proverb is musty. So I am to go back, say they, to my " second- nature element," to Swinburne's " mother of men," that mothered me as a white-faced boy, small for his years, " but full o' sheer devilment as a shark's mouth's full o' teeth," according to the first mate under whom I sailed. Yes, back to the greatest friend I have known, though none A WAR-TIME VOYAGE other has used me so roughly withal. (Query, to be answered at leisure: Which are your best friends — those who handle you Spartan-like to your benefit, or they who treat you kindly to your desires?) Six to eight months on the open seas it must be, if possible ; but not on a liner — no, not where hotel-life is the order. It must be in a tramp — " back to nature, as near as sensi bility will allow," say they, these tall-hatted men who have come in " to save the wreck " that has, metaphorically, been three times ashore since the war began, and who (the men, not the wreck) have now sternly put aside that years-old " medicine-habit." I know not what has been written about vaga bonds and vagabondage generally, that is apart from those who are recognised legally as such, actors and actresses not included. Nor can I reach any books to tell me; they are packed up, more snugly than I am packing together these com ments on the change that is to be. But of this much I am convinced: Once a vagabond, legal or not, always a vagabond, either in mind or action. You may settle down to the four walls of a house or set of rooms, in town or country, and make it lovable with your lares and penates and A WAR-TIME VOYAGE 3 garden; take an interest in things around you, human and otherwise; get a dog to run at your heels and a cat to lie on the hearthrug — yea, you may even have a singing-bird in a cage, pay income tax and house duty, read the newspaper every morning, and go to bed every night with your boots off, after the manner of all respectable (if not respected) and enfranchised citizens, and still there's a sense of emptiness somewhere. You are conscious, very clearly so at times, that in these conventional arrangements of yours there is a hitch — a rough-patched link in the end less chain that should keep the machinery running smoothly. You sit down, perhaps, look into the matter, and realise that in fitting up for this new regime you have — to change the metaphor — left a room unfurnished. Plainly, in caging the half-wild animal (which will never be really tamed as some women would have him be) you have forgotten to allow him the occasional run, in that other element of his, which would have kept him in love with the new one, if only by preventing him from hungering too much for the old. So run my thoughts — now that the verdict has been pronounced — as I look back to the has- beens, dwell humanly although unhealthily on A WAR-TIME VOYAGE the hateful yet needful break up of the present, incidentally curse in my heart the feudal German savagery that has brought my country to this pass (it is curious how you think of other sufferers when your own pains, of body or soul, are insis tent), then glance ahead to the long holiday to-be. But is it to be, will it be, can I make it truly a holiday — this going back to the sea, men, and ships? The Sea, Nature's greatest paradox; at once the primeval and the ever-young; next to woman, and at times even more than woman, the most powerfully attractive, yet repellent, thing in the universe; a nurse and a health- maker such as this earth does not know; and at the same time the world's first, most formidable, elemental and direct destroyer of men ; an appar ent simplicity that is, in truth, a mystery so pro found as to be almost equal to that of Life; a stupendous monotony that does not tire — except to those persons who are bores to themselves — because it is never the same from one day to another; the Universe's feminine half, sister to the hard, immovable earth, gentle as a loving woman to-day, to-morrow the most awful and tigerish thing in existence; a mother of men, who has called them and killed them, called them and killed them, again and again and again, from A WAR-TIME VOYAGE 5 the beginning of time, and will do so to the end, yet may never be denied. And Men — a smaller, although in ways a more potent, paradox that followed the sea in the order of creation; the very summit of excellence, as we know it in practice, also the very pit of infamy and general rottenness that could accompany human intelligence; immortality in the most mortal of bodies; God's incompleted acme of created things, which Satan took in hand to finish in his own way. And Ships — beauty, ugliness, and the heroic; romance and soulful suggestion well-nigh without limit, side by side with prosaicism and endless hints of darker things; security in that which is tragically puny and fragile compared with what it has to contend against; grace of curve and symmetry of outline cheek-by- jowl with the square, bluff, and tubby; the " winged argosy " of yesterday, too often, alas ! the home of horrors ; begetter of visions of the unknown, and still happily, though insufficiently, suggestive of romance to young minds. Yes, such is the prescription of my friends the doctors. (I believe them to be my friends.) And I take it that they have allowed for those other ingredients — the vagaries of wind and weather, A WAR-TIME VOYAGE ' good luck and ill fortune. As for U-boats: Most desperate diseases are said to be best attacked by desperate remedies. On shore here, where chim ney-pots, slates, and branches of trees come hurtling about in gales of wind, a slow physical death; out there a running of the blockade of life, with the chances about five in a thousand — J per cent. — against me. Well, the body may be in a perilous state (it appears to be so mostly, whether we know it or not) and the mind petulant, but the hard training of youth and early manhood counts for some thing at all times. As a boy I went to sea for the gain of pleasure — the gain of movement, colour of life, adventure, satisfaction. During some twenty-five years I have now and then tasted, and often longed for, that on which I lived lustily a dozen years and not too contentedly for a shorter period. Now of necessity I must go back. Formerly a vagabond from choice, I now have to be one willy-nilly. " Sweet are the uses of adversity." Thus I lie and scribble and think; and to morrow . My mood changes, and I feel, as Macbeth said, " How many such to-morrows have lighted fools the way to dusty death ! " But then, I reflect, he was not a kindly man; there- A WAR-TIME VOYAGE fore he could not have been expected to say a nasty thing in a nice way. He was not of the tribe of Homer, for instance; or he, too, would have known of the Eumenides, and might have talked of future things being " on the knees of the gods." And as the gods are sometimes even generous, I will leave it at that. A WAR-TIME VOYAGE CHAPTER II Leaving port — Mysterious regulations — Making ready — Down Channel — Cool bravery — Some of my shipmates — The master: a brief view — Away: lightless. Millwall Dock, seven a.m., and typical Novem ber, early enough though it be in the month. (All the world, from Archangel to Yokahama, knows where Millwall Dock is. A carman in 'Frisco, a gharry-driver in Calcutta, or a taxi-man in Sydney would tell you in an instant where it is ; and the first and third would just as readily undertake to get you there, if you guaranteed the fare.) Muffled to my ears I walk and rest, walk and rest on this lower " bridge," which is no bridge, inasmuch as it bridges nothing — this wood-floored islet on the floating island of iron, which I am to share with the master " till the ship reaches a British harbour," unless it pleases me to leave her at an earlier date, peradventure no other agent comes in to shorten my voyage. And as I turn and turn about, looking from craft to craft and re-examining old familiar things, I try to bring back the sensations of the past in similar scenes. A WAR-TIME VOYAGE Hopeless! Can weakness, the bitter accumula tions of many adverse years, and a consequent feeling of impotence and something akin to despair, be put off suddenly for the assumption of youth, strength, and irresponsibility? No. And I hart to watch the pilot come aboard, red-faced, keen-eyed, and quiet. His great navy-blue coat is buttoned up against the raw air of this foggy morning. After a few, low-spoken words with the master he goes on to the upper bridge. Now a queer, bubbling, choking-like noise issues from some where near the funnel. Then, blatant and impera tive, the syren screams out hurriedly the tidings that we are moving towards the dock-gates. (Syren! Shades of Olympians, could anything have been more ill-named? The acme of sweet ness in sound made to represent the very height of hideousness !) The only sign of war that we can see, hear, or think of for the time being is a cargo steamer here and there with a gun mounted aft. The s.s. Tramp is " flying light," and two diminutive tug-boats manoeuvre her to the lock- pit, saucy in their ability and perky in their movements — Cockneys in every sense and par ticular, the gamins of London's greatest highway. Here we see another evidence of war, men in 10 A WAR-TIME VOYAGE khaki doing sentry-go on each side of the lock- pit. More warnings are shrieked out to the river beyond. Then out we go, stern-first — super- stitiously a most fatal thing to do in the old, wind jammer-days. We are swung around by the tugs, and a sort of dithering begins to run through the vessel. She is moving under her own steam. The tugs drop off. Our tow-lines are hove-in by clanking, clattering, steam-spitting winches. One tug remains in attendance; the other turns about, flings out a snort from her hooter, and disappears in the fog — now thick fog, through which we creep down the river, screaming defiant, get-out-of-the-way notes as we go; whilst, to all visible and audible intents and purposes, our country is at peace with the world. After changing pilots at Gravesend we leave the fog astern, away in the sunlight, for which happy chance we say a sailor's Amen and prepare for what may be. The captain, on his way from upper bridge to cabin, lets out a cheery: "Well, Purser, what do you think of it now? " I make a suitable answer as he disappears, and Southend heaves in sight. Very shortly we know that we are at war. Loud, insistent, and menacing comes the sound of great guns — really big ones, for their "Boom! A WAR-TIME VOYAGE n Boom — boom! Boom!" follow us well-down the Channel. We Britishers know where they are and what the firing means; so we take no heed. But the neutrals and the coloured men amongst us snap occasional glances of interrogation at each other — not of alarm, however. Sea-dogs, like ourselves, men whose calling has many a time compelled them to hobnob with death for days on end, they are not perceptibly affected by either the ominous booming or by the fact that it is pretty near to us — only a few miles away in the haze on our port beam. This draws my attention to them ; and, as they come and go, I begin to study them more closely than I have done so far. Mark, run my cogitations, these men are not of our make in politics, aspirations, ideals, traditions, and the various et ceteras that go to make up civil isation. They are of the so-called inarticulate class of mankind. But if they say little, they have probably all the more in their minds; little know ledge of the real circumstances around us is most likely making them all the more imaginative as to mines, sudden attacks of the enemy, and all the unwarned up-goings to Heaven or down-fallings to the other place — if such an one there be. Ye"t do they go about with anything in the nature of blanched cheeks or bated breaths? Not a whit. 12 A WAR-TIME VOYAGE They are at sea, doing seamen's work; and that is all I can see about them. But there are other things that make us know of war being in progress — new, hampering, and mysterious regulations. In the old time when a ship had left her port of departure she was free to proceed wherever her master, depth of water, or hard blows would let her go. Now, however, here, there, or yonder — wherever the Admiralty directs — she must put down her " mud-hook," by landsmen, amateur yachtsmen and others of the laity termed " casting the anchor." And there she must stay till the allotted number of hours have gone by; then get under way again, proceed to So-and-so, anchor once more, and remain till the specified time comes to resume her voyage. Thus the wartime game goes on, until the danger-zone is past, and the good old packet is on the open seas out yonder, where no German flag flies to-day. This is what I am told, on my venturing a remark to the pilot about our going down Channel quickly if the weather holds good, with the result that a little of the sharp edge of this new-old experience is taken away, and again I curse official Germany in particular and non-official Germany in general for that it has been supine slave enough to allow itself to A WAR-TIME VOYAGE 13 be trained for forty years to become the stu pendous cat's-paw of unlimited ambition and aggression. My thoughts are diverted by the serving out of life-belts, the provisioning of the boats, and lowering the davits — which are patent ones — so that the boats will clear the " harbour "-decks and be all the more readily lowered if the gentle manly enemy should make us one of his polite calls away down the coast yonder. During this I hear many light remarks amongst the men, especially from the black-whiskered, oath-laden English bosun, and a lazy-looking, training-ship youth, who appears to have emptied his clothes- bag on to himself in order to keep out the cold. (By the way, it is, I believe, a shore tradition that a bosun is always a good swearer. So I hasten to put it on record that I have known two who had but very few oaths, and one that never swore.) Thus we plug away down Channel, against a freshening westerly breeze, and come to our first anchorage at sundown. We are one of a fair-sized fleet of tramps. A certain well-known shoal stretches east and west protectively on our sea ward side; whilst ahead and astern patrol-boats and more formidable grey craft steam to and fro, shepherding us in from the cowardly enemy, who 14 A WAR-TIME VOYAGE refuses to meet his legitimate opponents and seeks only the defenceless. Morning — at first dull-grey, misty, and por tentous of bad weather; then clearer, as " Old Jamaica" climbs from the horizon astern ; and, sticking up from the protective sand-bank, we see the foremast with lower top-sail- and t'gallant- sail-yards still across, of a fine full-rigger that struck here seventeen years ago. Also, on the further edge of the bank, a steamer that has " bumped " in the night and is now nearly high and dry; reminding us (As if we needed such reminders!) that this old, old sea has still her ancient methods of punishing those men who venture into her hidden ways, whether or not they be tyro-bunglers against her known and her secret laws, or initiated trespassers. We were to have been ploughing away again by this time — where to eventually we know not, for we left under sealed orders, as all foreign- going craft seem to do now-a-days. But the patrol- boat keeps us anchored by her signal. Those grizzled men and hardened youths of the shallower seas (fishers by calling in peace-time) have not yet completed their sort of housemaid-business of the channel ahead — if you can imagine a A WAR-TIME VOYAGE 15 housemaid sweeping a floor of powder-kegs on their ends, with here and there one that has a percussion cap in its head. At last the gateway is open and the sheep are liberated. At Deal the pilot leaves us with a cheery "Good-bye and good luck!" and the master takes charge, his face inscrutable. St. Catherine's Point and lighthouse go by in a temporary splash of sunlight ; and I feel that if I went on to those harbour-decks the fascination of the passing water would pull me overboard. The doctors were right — I badly need some tempering. Portland Bill we leave frowning in shadow, our minds too much on the freshening wind and the chance U-boat to give a thought to the appropriate, menacing look of that bluff, inshore of which are " interned " so many men who have made such fearful leeway from their proper compass-course through life. We pass some wreckage that tells its own tale — some hatches of an ocean vagabond like this of ours, an upturned boat, and some broken boards that appear to have come from a bulkhead in living quarters. The hint is enough, even without the master's nod at the wreckage, his smile of contempt and : "Damnable German work, Purser." I step inside to ascertain if my life-belt is as handy 1 6 A WAR-TIME VOYAGE as it may be, then return to the deck and make a closer study of my shipmates. On shore I heard and read something of what Merchant Service men have done for the nation during the war. Their bravery in facing Ger many's " ^rightfulness " was in all men's mouths — and women's too. And, indeed, some daring is needed to face sudden mines and torpedoes in heavy weather; especially when you haven't been reared to such abrupt transitions. For, mind you, that is different from having even ten minutes' grace to get your boats out, when the winds and seas are uncomfortable — very different. Then there is the raider out yonder in mid-Atlantic, in addition to the usual dangers of seafaring. So that in these thunderous times of war there are more percipitous comings and goings than were thought of in the dog-watches of the stately windjammers that have just about ceased to be — under the Red Ensign, that is. And to my mind medals should be given to men who are wounded in this business, also to all who put up a good fight, like that of the Mactavish, to whom be blessed memory ever more. I call to mind — whilst watching the officers and men do their work, exactly as others did twenty- five years ago — that this daring was generally A WAR-TIME VOYAGE 17 spoken and written of with an astonishment that would have amazed any man who had been to sea. Well, that was — and is — perhaps as it should be. One half the world never can know how the other half lives. Therefore it is right that stay-at- homes should expend so much marvelling at what is commonplace to those who do their business on these great waters — yea, even in peace-time. Right imagination and intuition are gifts — when they are not evils in disguise — to the few, not the privilege of the many; just as it is the prerogative of ignorance to contradict, or doubt in silence, according to the manners, or tempera ment, of the person. So I begin to ask myself what those dear wonderers would say if they could spend a week or two out here aboard such a tramp as this one — I mean in a tramp with a crew like ours, thirty-one, all told, two cats, and a dog: Scandinavians, who may have spoken truly as to their countries of origin; a Russian, with a suspicious habit of perceptibly pricking up his ears whenever anything is said in his presence concerning Germany; a Hollander, who rather looks the part he is playing. (He passes me at this moment, to take his " trick " at the wheel on the upper bridge, and I give him an extra, surreptitious scrutiny, and say to 1 8 A WAR-TIME VOYAGE myself: " Yes, I think he is honest." I am, not so much by training as by temperament, loth to cast doubt on any man.) Then we have a Belgian-American with one of the most Teutonic heads ever seen outside caricatures of Hans Rhineland. (I am leaning on the after-rail of the bridge, looking down at his close-cropped, fair-haired, bullet-shaped head, as he peels potatoes for dinner. I understand it to be already known that the worst insult any one can fling at him is to call him a German ; yet only an hour ago I made him start palpably and snatch a guilty look up at me, when I, seizing an opportune moment, said a few German words to him in a low, suggestive tone. It is true that he was six feet or so below me, was unaware of my presence, was preoccupied and alone.) Then there is a fussy young Spaniard; an Argentino of colour, much bone, little flesh, a cast in his left eye, and a slouching gait; also a Norfolk man, whose chief characteristics seem to be a queer, short, hurried, shuffling step, a shortage of inches, a round, flat face, and a tongue that will never get him into trouble. Such is our " deck crowd." The pale devils of the vessel's Hades are about as diversified; but they have more colour amongst them, and one A WAR-TIME VOYAGE 19 big-limbed, big-headed, real black, who has signed himself as from Barbadoes, is already boasting that he is a directly descended prince in his own right. Yet this dazzling exaltedness of his does not prevent him from shouting dire woe to a lean and skinny African in the stokehold, if the latter persists in making his " dam 'ulla- balloo " — i.e. singing a Salvation hymn. Sp they laugh and chatter, whistle, sing, and condemn one another, as we go ploughing our way through the danger-zone, " while all the world wonders." Of course, it is not for me to say how it is in the secret heart of the master. With him lies all the responsibility, care, and precaution; yet his face shows nothing unusual, distinctive though it is in itself. He has the kudos of any derring-do per formed by his vessel or crew; but the worries of his station — if he takes it at all seriously — far outweigh all he gains in that manner. In effect, he stands aloof from all. This simile is not apt on every point, but the eagle must bear his loneli ness, cold and sterile surroundings along with his grandeur and the envy of those who must inhabit lesser heights. Our master is still considerably a stranger to me, but by certain indications — possibly too brief and pointless for the landsman to see — I 20 A WAR-TIME VOYAGE have already judged him to be a thorough sailor; a man to whom the ways of the sea are second nature, one quick in deduction, and too ready in initiation to be caught in a corner. He is a good talker, has a ready smile, a flow of sarcasm, and a big voice in command. But I have yet to learn the man himself. Up to the present I know, in addition to the foregone, that he has played the Christian to me. Without any to-do he has taken me into his own, half-sacred habitation, made room for me in his private cabin ; whereas I should have found far more indifferent lodgement in a berth on the main-deck below us. Of Start Point — a mile or two away on our star board beam — I take a snapshot, not in defiance of the authorities who say that a poor, circum scribed civilian shall not now carry a camera anywhere about the South Coast, but as a fare well to England's white cliffs. For, as our move ments still lie particularly in the hands of the Admiralty and in part on the lap of the gods, I am not aware that I shall get such another chance of pictorial good-bye to the land I love yet cannot help in its hour of need. Eddystone goes by, an exclamation-note sen tinel in granite. Mid-afternoon comes; and we A WAR-TIME VOYAGE 21 cannot reach a certain point at which our orders say we must be at sundown. So a sheltering bay is entered, in fine weather, and down goes the " mud-hook " again, with a clanking rattle that disturbs the Sabbath calm in which we can see people taking the air on the promenade of the town that gives the bay its name. Daybreak again, and a fine one, for which mercy we are duly thankful. The dreaded Manacles are passed, then the Lizards, finally the Wolf four miles or so north of us, and we are out on the open sea, but not out of the danger zone. The strict look-out is now doubled, inde pendent of a patrol boat's signal that " Sub marines are about." The patrol steams down from his weather berth, asking who we are. He rounds our stern as a greyhound would that of a mastiff, and hangs on under the lee whilst we answer his question, also inform him, at his request, where we are from and whither bound. At this he lets us go and steams away to interro gate another vagrant of the seas, flying, as he goes, that warning as to submarines. Once more it is mid-afternoon. We arrive at the appointed place; and with the real pleasure of anticipation I look forward to the renewal of an oceanic intimacy that has been held so long in 22 A WAR-TIME VOYAGE abeyance — an intimacy (if I may call it such) that cannot be had within five hundred miles of land, and not even then unless Nature has shaped you that way. Here, in a light, searching, northerly wind, we box about till evening. All the time the master is, with his two officers, on the bridge above, quiet, yet with his glasses playing almost continually about the face of the water. Every one is on the alert in this trial-time of half- speed and waiting, for which the powers that be are surely much to blame; because it is in such handicapped conditions that U-boats have their greatest advantages. However, work and general duties go as though there were no U-boats west of Heligoland, concerning the surrendering of which Lord Salisbury must have turned uneasily and often in his grave since August 1914. At last we are away, on " our own " — away, with all the uncanny feeling of being outwardly lightless; a great black object throbbing through the dark night and the quiet waters, for not even a portlight is allowed to be seen; away into the freshening breeze, night, and peace; into the monotony of watch and watch, and the hard mothering of the great, man-making, insatiable seas that will assuredly be about us before many days have gone by — submarines allowed for — A WAR-TIME VOYAGE 23 because the month is November, and we, in the words of the old chantey, only partially applic able here, " are bound to the west'ard, Where the stormy winds blow; She's a Liverpool packet; OGod, let her go!" 24 A WAR-TIME VOYAGE CHAPTER III A breeze — An unpleasant remark — Our packet — Retrospec tions and observations — Changes in the Merchant Service — Not war conditions — Lack of romance in youth to-day — Too much like America — Then and now — An interrup tion — Cogitations resumed — Another break. Nine days out, five from the Scillies, and already we have passed through one Western Ocean gale of wind; and by all indications, barometric and natural, we are immediately in for another. I am, in fact, scratching this to the rhythm of its overture in the rigging, stays, etc., and to a roll of some twenty-odd degrees. (I have never before known a breeze to whistle so much amongst a vessel's " cordage " — as the standing and running- gear are poetically termed — like it does here; and for the life of me I cannot see why it should be so.) The light, northerly wind, with which we left land, soon became a strong nor'-wester, gave us a two days' hard blow, and has now chopped around to the sou'-west. Thus am I once more broken in to ways that had become rather memories than facts; and once more I go to table, the first time for many years, without feeling that I would prefer to go the other way. A WAR-TIME VOYAGE 25 But there is a price to pay for everything. A fly has been embedded in my balm of Gilead. To-night, in the cabin here, a remark was flung out that will sting for a long time to come, a remark that will prevent me from being at home in the vessel again. I knew, of course, that many masters do not like " owners' passengers "; but I did not expect to have it said in my presence that they are all so-so nuisances. Truly a man with a choleric temper, a spoilt child, and a gushing spring of water have much in common. However, unpleasant things should ever be treated briefly; so I turn me to this packet that is rolling her harbour-decks under water, yet hardly takes even a spray on the upper-deck. She is what is called a " turret ship " — one of the ugliest things that ever came to sea, an abomina tion to the glory and beauty of sky and wave, and an abortion in that the commercial purpose of her sort was never attained. They were designed and built for the purpose of lessening the Suez Canal dues; but they didn't. The canal authori ties were equal to the occasion. So, as a form of marine architecture, the " turret " ship is obsolete. Yet she has grace, has this one that is doing her best to carry her crew, and me incidentally, 26 A WAR-TIME VOYAGE to Philadelphia. (Yes, it is out at last. After some days of rumours as to whether it was to be Baltimore, or the former port, we now know the truth. Though why on earth — or on sea rather — there was any secret about it I don't under stand.) Lacking in all things that attract and compel the admiration of the eye, she has the grace that makes her loved of seamen — the grace to behave well in bad weather. In spite of three days of moderate gale, bow on, and fairly big seas running, so far she has not shipped a bucket of "green water" — i.e. nothing worse than sprays — on the upper deck. As for those " over board " portions, as I term them (called the " harbour-decks," and on which there are four hundred tons of gravel-ballast to steady her), on the port side and a little abaft the waist there is still a rough and worthless wooden stool that was there when we left the Thames. Here I must make a rather unpleasant break, seeing that my present net is one that should take in all the fish that comes near. The master and I have been talking of the then and now of things under this Red Ensign of ours. We have seen a like number of years, and came to sea at about the same time as each other. He has been here all the time, however, seeing the game continu- A WAR-TIME VOYAGE 27 ously; despite which he agrees with my observa tions, saying: " How can you expect 'em to stand still in these days, when everything's moving? " Life in our Merchant Service to-day is as different from what it was twenty-five years ago, as it was different then from what it had been in the days of " Coffin Ships " and the Liverpool packet " Rats "; and this holds notwithstanding what the war has brought about. In fact, fifty years have made more and greater changes in the life than the previous two hundred years had done. In the " eighties " and " nineties " of the past century first and second officers were so numerous that dozens were to be found working on the dock-wharves of London, Liverpool, and other large ports. To-day, in spite of the number of vessels that have been sent to the bottom by German " f rightfulness," mates, especially in tramps, are so scarce that a master has to put up with inefficiency (for every man with a certificate is not a competent officer) and to say little, and that little in a diplomatic manner; where for merly he said much, and that much generally in the way for which seamen have a long-standing, world-wide reputation. If he did otherwise he 28 A WAR-TIME VOYAGE would be pretty often short of officers, and in hot water with his owners because of delay for that reason. (In passing, it must be admitted that the same is true of engineers, because of the num bers of men that have gone to the making of munitions.) It is nothing unusual now-a-days for a tramp officer or an engineer to turn about and say, when reprimanded, no matter how quietly, for some fault or other: " Oh, very well, sir, if you're not satisfied with me, pay me off in the next port." He knows quite well that, unless the port be an out-of-the-way one, he can easily and quickly ship again at higher wages (particularly if the next be an American port). At the same time, this also is a condition brought about by the war, which has sent Merchant Service rates of pay up from seventy-five to a hundred per cent, higher than ever they were before; and remember the extra cost of living is borne by the owner. These are but simple facts, and not put down carpingly; but as plain truths compared to the truths of the past. In admiration of the war-time work of merchantmen as a whole I allow place to no man. To say that they are coming to sea, going home, and coming again — doing their work now as they did in times of peace — is, I think, A WAR-TIME VOYAGE 29 the highest praise that can be paid to any body of men. But this does not say that one may not point a moral without adorning the tale. Independent of the war, however, in the life it is an established fact that a certain firm in London run two or three fine, full-rigged wind jammers for the purpose of training youths who wish to become officers; also that these ships are subsidised more or less by all the big firms of liners. Still, despite the romance of sails, the youth of the nation holds back — that is the right class. In using windjammers to give them their first training there is some effort to make sailors of them; but it is more a case of playing on the romance in them, because as owners of sailing craft we are nowhere, nearly all of them having gone to other flags, particularly the deep-watermen. With all its changes for the better, life under the Red Ensign does not draw them in sufficient numbers; it doesn't promise an adequate return in cash; it is not one of the callings by which a man can put enough aside to enable him to retire early — in middle life, say — and be a little more than comfortable from then onwards. The spirit of commercialism, just as it has so successfully 30 A WAR-TIME VOYAGE done in the United States,1 has well-nigh throttled the spirit of romance in our male minds of sixteen years and upwards; and the more up-to-date schooling there has been prior to that age, the less romance there seems to me to be left — I mean strictly the romance of travel, adventure, discovery, and the like. And, one of the " old school " as I am, I look around this so-called " waste of waters," up at the ragged, strength- giving grey over-head, take a glance at a couple of our " deck-hands," and grieve for my country. For of a certainty her people are, at heart and in actual, personal occupation, becoming less and less maritime year by year. 1 All there is in this book concerning the United States was written before that nation joined the war. It was not " set down in malice," neither will it be erased in fear and insincere adulation. Such criticism as there is here should not hurt any healthy nature; and we know that the nature of the United States is as healthy as it is young. The observations are as much facts now as they were when they were written; there fore I see no reason to change them, any more than I see that either my publisher or any one else should be linked with them, or have the right to ask me to alter them. They are entirely personal and I alone am answerable for them. I am not on the war-path against the people of the United States. Some virtues of theirs would be advantages to any other nation; straightforwardness being one that can be com mended to all, to ourselves no less than to any. But I have ever maintained that certain of their traits, or " features," are (like so many of ours) fit subjects for satire. Here, however, there is no satire, only plain facts and opinions. Neither do I A WAR-TIME VOYAGE 31 As things go now it looks as if in the near by- and-bye we shall have to depend altogether on foreigners and coloured men to man our merchant craft, as Hannibal had to defeat the Romans — and failed. We may even have to descend to some of the low-down usages that America used to employ to encourage desertion from foreign vessels, in order to augment her own meagre personnel in vessels that flew the Star-spangled Banner. For American youths, far less than our own, steadily refuse to be " rocked in the cradle of the deep." In a land where the main gospel has so long been one of dollars, young men owe the people of the United States any grudge for that they did not force the hands of their governors and come in at first to do their righteous share against the general devilism of Germany. For their energy in a great cause one can only give all praise. Yet how could they have done less and still have been American ? Is not the name synonymous of energy ? Personally — like ninety per cent, of my countrymen — I always did detest blatancy of any sort. And I venture to hold that a great nation (great in intellect and general morality, not in mileage and money) does not shout over a hundred and one small successes of daily life; but does even great things in a quiet way. I bow to no one in my admiration of what America is now doing, and every vestige of honour be unto her for the really great thing she is doing in a quiet way. They have also the saving sense of satirical humour, one instance of which delights me. I refer to the Washington report that the United States War Department has decided that their " con scientious objectors " are not to do any fighting, nor even to act as a transit corps, but to come to Europe as the grave- diggers of the army. 32 A WAR-TIME VOYAGE naturally prefer a home where money can be made, to any home on the rolling deep, however comfortable, easy-going, and well-provisioned it may be. Besides, the American people, as a whole, look down on those who take to a sea-life as being inferior sort of men. With them our old-time joke of " the fool of the family being sent to sea " has found a new lease of life, with these changes : They take it very seriously, and say he has " gone " to sea. Perhaps that is why the personnel of the United States Navy has been, in addition to its Merchant Service, so largely made up of foreigners. But our ship-board differences between now and twenty-five years ago are more marked in the conditions of sailors and firemen than they are in the officers; and in these matters, whereof I am now writing, the war has made no change. I am not one to say that there was no need for any of these changes. Old " Shellback " as I am, or was, one who has sailed and steamed both before and abaft the mast, I know the half-secret, and often open, brutal horrors of the prison- house that was. I also know that discipline and efficiency are sadly lacking to-day, and that if they were insisted on, as they were in my time, half the vessels under the Red Ensign would be A WAR-TIME VOYAGE 33 laid up for want of crews. Socialism appears to have come to sea ; and the sooner the interloping agitator is wrecked and gone to the bottom, the better it will be for our Merchant Service — also the sooner I shall be pleased. In the old days it was wrong to keep men working seven days a week, at sea and in harbour — as I have experienced. But " what a change, my countrymen," from that to giving the " deck hands " complete rest (except from the wheel and look-out) from Saturday noon to Monday- morning, and being afraid to ask them even to sweep the decks in the interval, lest the request should cause trouble! We all know that a change in food — not so much in kind as in quality — was desirable, highly desirable. (I was one who agitated, in the Press, for the change.) But have the jam and condensed milk, the potatoes, turnips, and other vegetables, the condiments, pickles, fresh meat, and soft bread, given satisfaction, improved the bene ficiaries, or brought a better class of men to sea ? No, sirs — neither the one nor the other. Just as the old fare of " salt horse, hard tack, an' pea soup " was not good enough, so the " soft tack " of to-day is, as a whole, the cause of grumbling. Already I have seen mess-kids (large, deep, tin 34 A WAR-TIME VOYAGE . dishes in which the men's meals are served out) of excellent food thrown down the ash-shoots; have heard firemen and so-called sailors going cursing from the galley doorway; and also seen a deputation of malcontents grumbling to the steward because they had not " something better for tea." What they had was " hot-pot," which, along with " rice and curry," formed one of the dishes of the cabin tea. (Perhaps I should say that tea in the Merchant Service is really a five to six o'clock supper, therefore a substantial meal.) (I am scribbling these observations in a note book, whilst walking to and fro, to get the breeze and keep warm, on the leeside of our islet; and here the master comes out, sees my occupation, and says: " Taking notes? " I tell him what I am doing, and we fall to a discussion of the subject. His advice is to leave it out of my itinerary for the present — " till the war's over. Remember, the world has a sweet tooth in the matter of truth — it hkes only the sugary sort; and it won't like you for giving it an unsweetened cup, when it's having to drink so much that's bitter." This pulls us aside to talk of popularity. He has a fine sense of deduction, has read much, although not always of the best. I get more advice, say I have never sought popularity at the A WAR-TIME VOYAGE 35 expense of truth and never will. Whereat he delivers another obiter dictum, as he goes to the upper bridge, and I resume my observations, thus:) The softening of rigours has led to a lessening of morale and of discipline; and wherever the latter decreases, so does efficiency — at sea, at any-rate. The pendulum, too long one-sided, has now swung too far the other way. For tough human fibre and rather frequent brutalism we have brought in a sort of emasculated seaman- hood, in which effeminacy is not altogether absent, albeit it still gets drunk as soon as it arrives in harbour. In the old days, when it was virile and wicked, it also got drunk and tried to paint the town red. But it paid for doing so, as every man should when he goes on the loose and neglects his work. In these times of degeneracy afloat, however, a man may be ashore, drinking instead of being at work; and if he is logged for doing so, especially in an American port, he just " jumps " the vessel and goes elsewhere for more money, providing that he doesn't leave too much behind in shape of undrawn wages. Meanwhile the master has to pay nearly twice the man's wages to get another in his place. 36 A WAR-TIME VOYAGE As for telling a man at sea that he is inefficient, or lazy, or is not sick when he lays up because he has stomach-ache or has tapped his finger with a hammer — well, the only result of such temerity and want of tact is to have the man say: " All rite, pay me off, then " ; or to make him keep to his bunk for the remainder of the passage, and threaten all the time to "go to the consul," who will " protect " him. And all this for £y to £g a month, good quarters, and plenty of excellent food. Nor does he even say " sir " generally when he speaks to an officer or to the master — no, not if he is a " white " man. That is now-a-days left to coloured men ; it would be too much of a con cession on the part of a " white " seaman — sea man? No, ocean-labourer, I mean. Sailors are sea-curiosities in these times of incapableness, socialism, and Jack being not merely as good as his master, but about a cask of pork better. I do not say, however, that all are inefficient, nor even that fifty per cent, are so. But I am certain that where inefficiency was rare at sea here it is now common; also that socialism has made for the gutting of discipline, has put emasculated evils into the places of virile ones. Of course, I am writing particularly of tramp life, A WAR-TIME VOYAGE 37 where most of the hands are foreigners and coloured men. And so far as my recent gleanings and observations have carried me in this new study of an old subject, I cannot see that the war has really much to do with these deplorable changes — only to this extent: The majority of able British seamen are now in the great fleet of transports, patrol boats, and hospital ships. Again the even tenor of my unpleasant cogita tions is interrupted, this time by an appeal to the Old Man for fairness. There is an eruption of strong words, broken sentences, contradiction, and blubbering from the deck below. When the tangle is somewhat unravelled it appears that the lazy training-ship youth — down as an A.B. at £y ios. a month — has been giving the black- whiskered bosun some " old buck " (also called " chin music," " back answers," etc.), for which reason the bosun has " cuffed his ear'ole a bit." He weeps afresh and says he has been " pummelled and kicked." I note that the bosun is wearing soft rubber boots. The master acts diplomatically, blames both sides, tells them to behave them selves, and sends them back to work. The petty officer, however, is called up again and cautioned about keeping his " hands quiet aboard this packet." He promises obedience and departs. I 38 A WAR-TIME VOYAGE turn back to my notes, decide that sufficient for the day is the unpleasantness thereof; at the same time I feel glad that it is said and done with, and on to the upper bridge I go to smoke a pipe behind the dodger and talk with the amiable young officer of the watch. A WAR-TIME VOYAGE 39 CHAPTER IV Captain Dash, after some study — A " cai-astrophe " — Writing in a 22-degree roll — A startler — Trouble in the bathroom — An unwelcome " joke " — A black night and a tremendous sea — A phenomenal roll — Hove-to — Next morning, some ballast gone, but weather finer — Query: Bermuda? — Misapplied satire — Ocean-borne literature — A delightful " company." I have said already that our master has a habit of delivering himself of unpremeditated sort of obiter dicta. In fact, two or three of his pronounce ments have been put into the preceding pages, and more will be used, if possible. I must explain these two words. In addition to his fairly wide reading and an unusual "grasp of what is often termed " men and things," he is one of the finest raconteurs I have met. (Of course, all sailors are not of the bluff, hearty, and elementary type of men that does duty for them in the public mind. Quite a few of them, as the saying goes, are ordinarily cute men of the world, and some of them are even cute enough to be rogues.) To a ready flow of words, a bent for humour, and a generally correct sizing up of the event, situation, or person, our master adds such a sense 40 A WAR-TIME VOYAGE of satire that he often sees fun in what hurts another. More, he has seen a variety of hfe afloat and ashore, has considerable acumen and information, has given some study to the ways of men who live by trade or other forms of advertise ment, and has a fund of memories about men and women whom he has met, especially in his native place (a small town in Devon). Last, he sees no pubhc man, and only one successful one, through any sort of rose-coloured glasses. Thus it goes without saying that he can be, and often is, the satire and lack of faith notwithstanding, as entertaining a man as one need wish for, even to cross the Atlantic with in winter, and that is as great a compliment as any self-respecting man likes to pay. Well, it so happens (And this is where Fortune once more makes me her butt. Tyche was ever a too satirical jade!) that I have stirred in him the idea of setting his life down in a book. If he does, and makes it as interesting as the yarns he spins and the characters he sketches, it will be as rare and fine a thing as the English press has seen these many years, even though it be short of the milk of human kindness. It is this idea that robs me — no, I can't be robbed of what I never pos sessed, as the blind boy said of the sight that had A WAR-TIME VOYAGE 41 never been his; no, it prevents me from using — from adorning, embellishing even, my poor flat pages with some of his tales. But I may use such of his odds and ends of opinion as come trippingly and pithily to life, providing that the source is acknowledged (He doesn't understand the nice honour of the creative worker, so I say no more than, " Oh, of course."), and that he doesn't remember them when I afterwards tell him of them. Talk about that eternal she, of the yashmak and the sweetmeats, who spun her verbal fancies through a thousand and one nights to the caliph — tut, she is like the patent medicine that gets the whole of the market by a lavish expenditure in printer's ink " testimonials " and phrases that catch and hold with " the fool many." Not all the beauties of the front row have all the loveliness of their sex. I don't know, at the moment, whether or not this is one of his unconsidered trifles. We are heaving along through another nor'-west gale; and I am holding on, port and starboard, to the fixed table, jotting down a thought as often as it is safe to let go with my right hand. So I can't agree to be held guilty of any plagiarism that I may commit under such circumstances as these. 42 A WAR-TIME VOYAGE Besides, this delicate, Bohemian glass sort of health of mine has got another crack somehow, or what seems to be a crack. So I am rather reckless of consequences, and somewhat peevish with the weather and things generally into the bargain. (Here, because of my forgetting to record the event at its proper time and place, I must inter rupt the rough tenor of my itinerary to say that a day or two after we left the " danger zone " cat number one disappeared. She was a young tabby that played engagingly about the decks with the equally young dog, and made her home in the dining-saloon. Questions were asked. A search was made. Her absence was proved, and the query stood on most tongues: Who threw the cat overboard ? No one seemed to have owed it any ill-will; therefore its disappearance was, and is, a mystery. Having known serious trouble to come out of such an incident, I waited, watched, and listened; but nothing particular happened further in the matter. (Then, somewhere about the tail-end of the gale before this one, number two was found to be missing. Now this was a black one that lived with the engineers in a detached " house " on the big island abaft our islet. What I mean is that A WAR-TIME VOYAGE 43 Blacky dwelt apart from the crowd, elevated, isolated, and, I understand, was hardly ever seen away from her select neighbourhood. [I never saw the cat.] Then, lo! colour began to tell, as it does always and everywhere. Here and there I heard murmurs, mostly of an indirect nature, that bad luck would be sure to come of it; we could not lose two cats and go through a passage, especially a North Atlantic winter passage, without something happening. " Besides, this was a black un." And not a few were the open or covert threats of what would occur to the perpetrator of the deed if his identity should be discovered. It appeared to me that the whole crew resented the loss of the cat, the Old Man alone excepted, who merely said, " It's a cat astrophe." But then, how often does the wrong doer try to cover up his tracks by opinions that are contrary to his actions ! Amongst the prophets of trouble were some of the " after-guard," both of on deck and below; and although they spoke in a pretendedly light way, it seemed to me for the most part that there was a palpable weight dragging at the heels of the lightness. " Supersti tion dies hard," quoted I to myself. Not that the master was one of these — Oh, no ! He is made of sterner, more up-to-date stuff. — Stay! Lest I do 44 A WAR-TIME VOYAGE a sort of dishonour to the softer and more humane side of him, let me hasten to say that if he is not of sterner stuff, he has such histrionic talent as to deceive even so close and seasoned a student of humanity as I.) So much for the past tense of the cat affair. Now I can return to things as they are — that is where they are not as they were ten seconds ago, and will not be ten seconds ahead. As to this matter of holding on whilst the writing fit is at work, I might disburden myself of two thoughts, in place of one, by getting in an extra turn when ever this dear, old, iron (or steel, I don't know which; but I beg her pardon, in any case) " foundry " * rolls to left — to starboard, that is, as I'm sitting with my back for'ard — only I cannot write with my left hand. Thus, because of this phenomenal rolling (A hght ship, please remember, in justice; and we have come suddenly into big seas), the necessity of having a grip on both sides, and the inconsiderateness of the literary mood coming tyrannically on one at such a time, I am losing one thought out of every two. Not that they are of such transcendent Bang! I am literally jumped up from my seat, and dropped again as abruptly. She dithers, 1 A steamer seaman's term. A WAR-TIME VOYAGE 45 shivers, trembles, and nearly stops. The vibration runs through her from head to stern. You can feel her pausing, and almost imagine her wonder ing, rather fearfully, if she may try again. If you didn't know the meaning of it, you might, accord ing to your temperament, become panicky and rush on deck. It feels as if a big shell has hit us somewhere, but not exploded. In reality it is merely what happens every now and then to a light steamer that is more or less head-on in a gale of wind — i.e. the old lady brought her forefoot down on a sea. The danger is that she may thus start sufficient rivets as to cause a leak. After such a passage as this some vessels have had to be dry-docked and have as many as four to five hundred rivets renewed. However, the Tramp is nosing it again, in her patient, painful, get-there-some-day sort of way; and I would change to the settee on the starboard side of the table (There isn't one on the port side ; and a movable seat now would be a moving one all the time), be in a position to do more holding on with my feet, and so go naturally to and fro with the heaving of this " foundry " that has become feminine; but again I can't. We have had to pack that settee hurriedly with the maga zines, periodicals of other sorts, and the small 46 A WAR-TIME VOYAGE nautical library that usually litters table and settees, and with all the other movable et cetera of the cabin. Bang! — clatter, scutter — whirrrr! Something's broken lose in the bathroom. . . . I have been to correct the trouble — a wooden pail in which I had deposited my toilet, shaving, and other gear, from their shelves and pigeon holes. It must have thought itself a tramp, like this old dear under my feet, for it seemed sud denly to have been given sensibility, satire, and action. It was scooting, port and starboard, across the tiled floor, unshipping a part of its cargo here and a part there — my razors and tooth brush into a pair of the Old Man's slippers, my bottle of shampoo liquid running to waste on a little pile of manilla yarn (As if my hair were any thing like that! This was the deepest cut of all), and other things landed in places almost as likely. Having re-stowed the oddments, put away my notebook in rather peevish disgust, and struggled into a heavy coat, I am going on deck — wondering why this North Atlantic will persist in being so German-like in winter-time to a poor beggar of a semi-invalid. If age counted for anything beyond accumulated experiences — most of them point less in the matter of proper effect — and dislike of change, it would surely know better, A WAR-TIME VOYAGE 47 $ $ $ $ $ Next morning: I must write in the past tense again. At the lee fore-corner of our " house " {i.e. the master's apartments on this islet, whereof I am temporarily a lodger — the man in the steerage, I put it, with a foolish attempt to be jocular) I ran into some one ; or, rather, a bigger and heavier frame than mine knocked me violently aside in the darkness — to which my eyes were still unaccustomed — and a larger, more blustering voice than mine said quite gaily: " Hello, Purser, mind your helm in these narrow seas ! " Of course, it was the master; for no other person in this packet has a voice comparable to his, except the engineers' steward, a youth, who never comes here, and would not, I think, have spoken so. Captain Dash was in soft, rubber boots, perambulating the lower bridge; which, as I may have said already, is not a bridge. He had possibly been studying the weather. I write " possibly " because he is not one who needs to study that. So much is he a sailor, so right in intuition and quick in deduction in most things that are of the daily round, the common task of his calling, that a glance at the barometer and another at the heavens and the sea, and he 48 A WAR-TIME VOYAGE knows the situation as well as he, or any other man, would know it after an hour's study. So I write " possibly," and add in the same way that he might have been taking quiet com munion with himself on his store of those things which so many of us accumulate yet never talk about; also that he had perhaps been dwelling on the petty ills and frictions of the time, situa tion, ship-board management, etc. For we know with some men " hght cares speak, when mighty griefs are dumb "; and if our master has a weak ness (And what man shall say that he himself has none?) it is to let the httle troubles of his place speak too loud. However, after a few obvious remarks he went on to the upper bridge; leaving me to my thoughts, the darkness, the rolling, and the weather. I was glad at this, not being inclined to talk. Truth to tell, being not a little out of sorts at the time, I rather resented that needless collision, and the manner of it, at the corner of the house. .But, then, some men will be boys now and then in their jokes so long as they are able to joke; and, on the whole, well it is for them and others that such is the case. Being only a smallish man, and in a precarious state of health, the bump had given me a sort of shock. But the main point in the A WAR-TIME VOYAGE 49 matter is that the " joke " is a good individual trait, one of those traits that, in the aggregate, form a character. I worked my way to wind'ard, starboard side, a rather slow process. I could not say that the gale was really heavy, about force eight and a half, or perhaps nine. I have been in much heavier gales; but the seas were truly big, and the night — in the phrase of a bosun, whom I shall never forget, it was " black as the Earl of 'Ell's weskit." All that I could see beyond the hatch immediately for'ard and the foremast, and then only in a blurred way, were the great, white heads of the seas, as they thundered down on us, and the vessel's head, off and on, in a smother of foam. How, in the name of all that was lucky, she kept from taking a big roller aboard I did not, and never shall, profess to understand. As it was, all that the seas did was to crash on to the harbour- deck, send over a drenching cloud of spray high as the foremast-head (as I had witnessed on another occasion in the day-time), and go seething and roaring along aft. It was a stupendous sight narrowed into small compass, and awesome, I had no doubt, to any one who had not seen the like before. The weight of the gale has crossed our head, 50 A WAR-TIME VOYAGE and this is its sort of aftermath, I said to myself; because the wind always travels so much faster than the sea it raises. With this, having had enough of the weather-side, I went around to leeward; feeling that if the cure which the doctors had ordered was of a Spartan nature, it was, at any-rate, the right one. Already I had benefited so much that both dyspepsia and neuralgia of some ten years' standing were but intermittent and anaemic ghosts of their former persistent and sturdy selves. Hardly had I reached the leeside of the house, when the vessel rolled that way until it seemed as if she would turn turtle. For a good minute or more — a long time in such a situation — I held my breath and waited. Then up she came again, slowly; but she came up, and that was every thing. No sooner was she fairly righted and nosing it once more, than the engines stopped. Captain Dash had laid her to. Knowing his packet, as a sailor should know the vessel he commands, he knew what was best for her when it came to rolling of that sort. " And there she lay," wallowing, but much more comfortably than before, and with no more mighty bangs at her forefoot. A WAR-TIME VOYAGE 51 We have considerably less wind; therefore the seas are not so lively as they were last night, but they have not gone down perceptibly. For this latter reason we are still lying-to, thus saving coal, because the Tramp could no more make headway now than she did in the thick of it yester-evening. I see that some of the ballast and planks are gone from the port harbour-deck, carried away in the great roll last night. The sky is also still overcast, so that no " sight " (a sextant " sight " of the sun) has been taken this morning. This is rather a pity, the same having held for some days past now. However, the glass is rising, and not too fast, I am pleased to note. This is the sixth gale of wind we have had since we left land on that cold, clear evening in November; and if the barometer went up too quickly it might mean that we should get another strong breeze pretty soon. And twenty days of alternating sou'west andnor'west moderate gales, and in such close quarters and limited company, too, are, I think, quite a full dose of the prescription that I was ordered to take. But I must not complain. In addition to being now able to find some pleasure in eating, I can sleep for a few hours at once without opiates, and that even in spite of the steady " sentry-go " of 52 A WAR-TIME VOYAGE the officer on the bridge not more than two feet above my head. Hence, ye dyspeptics, ye poor souls who are racked with neuralgia, unable to sleep, and eaten up with worries great and small, come out here on a tramp voyage in winter; come and get the Draconian cure, let Nature's active savagery make men of you again. The master comes in to cut up a pipe of tobacco. He has been conferring with " The Chief " (always the ship-board appellation of a chief engineer) and tells me that another delaying gale will compel him to go into Bermuda for coal. We have only just enough to carry us to Philadelphia at our ordinary pace of about eight and a half knots per hour. To me, as a passenger — hiding the fact under an appearance on the Ship's Articles as purser at a shilling a month — there is pleasure in the thought of going to Bermuda ; but for his and our owners' sakes I am sorry. I tell him so, with some stress on the latter, for I stand much indebted to those same owners. His reply is a fragment of that satirical, shouldering-off laugh of his, a sort of harsh: " Talk is cheap, but you have to pay for whisky; but it all comes out in the wash," and on deck he goes again, leaving me wondering if there is such a thing as transmigration of souls. A WAR-TIME VOYAGE 53 For it is so easy to think of him as a master-satyr from some ancient Greek wood, one who looked out on the world, poked fun at its tender places, then laughed at the pain he caused. I say "master " because it is difficult to think of him in any subordinate position. With his disappearance I, having had my morning recreation, turn to find something to read in the higgledypiggledy assortment on the star board settee. With the exception of such things as epitomes of navigation, nautical tables, manuals of compass adjustment, and what-not, sailing directions, Laws of Storms, The Ship-Master's Guide to the Medicine Chest, and other compila tions of sea lore, the only literature that we have consists of Captain Dash's bundle of magazines, grave and gay, and some contemporary examples of light fiction that I brought, the most of which are now looked on as past things. (I was forbidden to bring anything else; but I didn't obey the order.) Stay! — I err, as I have been doing all my life, apparently, or I should be situated differently from what I am. I was forgetting to mention these illimitable books of sea and sky (the latter is now clearing, blue and hopefully), and the poor yet often unanswerable commentaries that they raise in one's mind. 54 A WAR-TIME VOYAGE However, I am lucky enough to discover, under one of the seats, Sir Conan Doyle's White Company — a cheap, American issue with a woman of to-day on the paper cover. Oh, those Americans ! But this fearful, horrid, exasperating anachronism doesn't spoil my dehght in big Jock of Hurdle, the little, white-haired knight (in whom I don't quite beheve, all the same), the young, unsophisticated " clerk," and all that make up the personnel of a rattling good tale with an atmosphere that makes me believe it to be the real thing. A WAR-TIME VOYAGE 55 CHAPTER V To believe or not believe — Disruptions aboard — A Sefior — A significant fact — Keeping out of trouble — An interrup tion — The "Prince" again — Undeserved tolerance — " The Duke of Ber-jwoK