Chapter VIII: The Send-Off

The _Port Edes_ had gained the name of an unlucky ship. She had slain three men in her building; she had crushed another to death the day before she left the slips; and, though only three years in the water, she had already maimed enough hands from various crews to make her a full complement. Some vessels are this way; from no explainable cause there seems to be a diabolic fatality about them.

It is not to be supposed that sailormen rush to join a craft of this sinister reputation. Although they are called asses in the bulk, they are only asses in part. They always try for the best berths first. But because there are not enough of these to go round; and because, thanks to the Dago and the Dutchman, there are not sufficient berths of any sort whatever to supply all aspirants; it is always possible to man any vessel which a Board of Trade official will pass through a dock gates.

Just as no man is ever successful in anything without due cause, so _per contra_ few sailormen are down on their luck except through some peculiar trait of incapacity. So that on your unpopular ship, be she tramp-steamer, or eke weeping wind-jammer, you do not get much pick of a crew. You have to put up with what other people have left, and it does not take you long to learn that your beauties have not been rejected for their excellences.

It was this way on the _Port Edes_. Forward and aft, engine-hold and pantry, each man on board of her had his private sea-failings. Between them they lacked wakefulness, eyesight, decision, strength of fist, strength of language, seamanship, and common sobriety. Amongst the deck-hands there were virulent sea-lawyers; in the stokeholds there was _âmes damnées_ wanted by several Governments. The engineers were skilful in gaining the smallest possible knottage per ton of coal; the mates were all slipshod navigators, untrustworthy even to correct a compass and useless to drive a truculent crew.

Over all was Owen Kettle, master mariner. Whatever his failings might be (and the index of them tailed out), they did not show prominently at the head of such a ship’s company. Like all men in the merchant marine, he had been bred in the roughest school; but, unlike his successful brethren, he had not graduated later on to the smooth things of a well-manned passenger liner. For his sins he had remained the pitiful knock-about skipper, a man with knife-edged words always ready on the lip of his teeth, a leaden whistle in one jacket-pocket, and a lethal weapon in the other. He was an excellent seaman and navigator—a man capable of going an entire voyage without taking off his clothes or enjoying one watch of regular sleep. Whilst in command at sea, he credited himself with the powers of a Czar, and was entirely unscrupulous in gaining ends which expediency or his owners laid down for him; and though not physically powerful, he had the pluck of a dog, and an unholy reputation for marksmanship. Taking into allowance these qualifications, it may be understood that for the handling of such a menagerie of all-nation scoundreldom and incapacity as bunked in the S. S. _Port Edes_, no better man than Owen Kettle breathed in either hemisphere.

The crew signed their marks on the articles at the shipping office in the Sailors’ Home, and went off grumbling to get rid of their advances. Later, most of them turned up on the steamer; some with their worldly goods done up in dunnage sacks (which look to the uninitiated like pillow-slips); some apparently possessing nothing but the squalid raiment they stood up in. There was not one of them dressed like a sailor, according to the conventional idea, yet most of them had made their bread upon the seas since early boyhood, which shows what conventional ideas are sometimes worth. They were most of them oldish men, and looked even older than their years.

The engineers came on board early, for the most part in scrubby blue serge, and sour black temper. They grumbled at the mess-room in broad Glaswegian, prophesied evil (in advance) about the capacities of the mess-room steward and the ship’s cook, dumped their belongings into their various rooms, and changed to apparel more suitable for tail-twisting in the unclean regions below. Then they went on duty, quarreled with the donkeyman who was making steam for the winches, and proceeded to split up their crew of firemen and trimmers into watches, and apportion them to furnace doors and bunkers.

The three mates, the boatswain, and the carpenter were also on board betimes, most of them large-headed with recent libations, and feeling cantankerous accordingly. There was a small general cargo being shipped for New Orleans, and it gave these worthy officers ease to find occasional acid fault with the stevedore’s crew or the crane men on the wharf; but, for the most part, they shuffled about the decks in easy slippers, attending to the various ship duties in massive sneering silence.

Patrick Onslow came into the chart-house on the bridge-deck, closing the door behind him. “A cheery, amiable crowd you’ve collected,” he said.

“Aren’t they?” replied Captain Kettle from a sofa locker. “They’re just a terror of a crew. You wait till we get to sea, and they start on mischief. My mate’s a cur; he wouldn’t stand up to a Chinaman. And the rest of the after-guard is much of a pattern—picked that way on purpose. Oh, I tell you, Mr. Onslow, that I stand alone, and I shall have my hands full. But let ’em start, the brutes. I’ll haze them. It isn’t a new sort of tea-party, this, with me.”

“You’re going into it with your eyes open, anyway.”

“Oh don’t you make any error, sir,” said Kettle. “I know my job. And if I warn you, it’s because you’ll see things for yourself, and perhaps join in at them. I don’t go and tell everybody. Not much. They think ashore I’ve got a real soft thing on this time. Why, do you know, Mr. Onslow,” he added, with a thin, sour grin, “my old woman wanted to come with me for the trip. She said it was so long since she’s had a whiff of outside air, that now I’d such a tidy steamboat under me, she couldn’t miss the chance. Yes, sir; and she said she’d bring one of the kids with her that wanted to be a sailor, like his daddy! I tell you, she was that took on the idea she’d hear no refusal; and I had to write a letter to owners, and get them to wire back a ‘No’ she could read for herself. It’d look well set to music, that tale, wouldn’t it? Sort of jumpy music, you know, with a yo-heave-humbug chorus to it, same as all sailors’ songs have that you hear in the halls.”

Onslow shrugged his shoulders. “What can you expect at the price?” he asked. “This isn’t a twelve-pound-a-month berth; and you’ve threshed across the Atlantic in a worse ship for less.”

“Don’t you mistake me,” retorted Kettle. “I’m working for full value received; and there’s many an old sailor’d like to be in my shoes, if he only knew. I’m not grumbling at the berth, only when a man’s on a racket of this kind, it’s a bit hard on him to have a wife and kids he’s fool enough to be fond of. It’s an ugly amusement, lying to them like a play actor, when you know it’s ten chances to one you’ll never see English mud again. That’s the way it cuts, though I suppose you’ll think it all a sailor’s grumble. Perhaps you aren’t a married man?”

“No; I’m not.”

“But you’ve got people who care for you?”

Onslow gave the ghost of a smile, and then laughed. “No,” he said, “I can’t even boast of that. Acquaintances are mine in thousands; but friends—well, all friendship has its breaking strain. I’m a bit like that comfortable, contemptible person, the Miller of the Dee. I believe I did care for somebody once; and she made me think she cared for me. Probably she lied, because, under persuasion, she went off with another man. Bah! though, what does it matter? Kettle, we’re talking rank sentiment, and that’s an unprofitable employment for men engaged on a piece of delicate business. And—here’s a gentleman come to tell me that the consignment of specie is just commencing to arrive. Now, captain, the stuff’ll be in iron-bound boxes, and you and I have got to weigh each one separately, and check the invoice. Then we’re to act as our own stevedores, and stow half of it in the cabin next my room, and half of it across the alley-way next the mate’s.”

“Why divide it?”

“Because the weight is big, and it would give your steamer a heavy list to starboard.”

“Oh, as to that, never mind. We can easily bring her up again with a trimming tank; and I shouldn’t feel comfortable if any of the stuff was in that room next the mate’s. You see, Mr. Onslow, any one on board can go down that alley-way. In fact, it’s the only road from end to end of the ship, unless you go up over the bridge deck. And I’d not guarantee but what the bait wouldn’t make some of them beauties try and tamper with the door. It’s big enough to smudge the honesty of an archbishop, if he was only earning four pounds a month. Now, the room next yours has iron walls, and opens only into the inner cabin. There’s a good lock on it already, and if I make the carpenter bend on four more, you’ll have a strong-room the Bank of England might boast about.”

“That sounds sensible,” commented the envoy from the bank.

“Very well,” said Onslow, “I believe it is the best plan. Now, if you please, we’ll have the weighing-machine in the main cabin, and if you, sir, will instruct your men to bring in the boxes one by one, I’ll satisfy myself that they agree with the tally, and Captain Kettle shall build them up in the state-room before us both. It’s a very responsible job we have upon us, and the more counter-checkings and precautions we can put into it the better for our several reputations.”

It was a responsible job. Not every day is specie to the tune of half a million British sovereigns shipped from a Liverpool dock; and because gold-boxes are made in a conventional pattern, the shipment was spotted, and crowds gathered to stare at the cased-in wealth.

As staring dumbly is dry work, self-appointed orators amongst the crowd naturally distributed gratis their own private opinions upon the situation; and, according to their luck or eloquence, these attracted larger or smaller audiences. No one took them very seriously, and they for the most part treated the subject in a jocular vein. It was not till Captain Kettle and the Mersey pilot had gone on to the upper bridge, and the mate on the fore-deck had cast off the first bow-fast, that a prophet arose who spoke of the gold shipment in another key.

He was a wild, unkempt, knock-kneed man, who attracted first attention by tying a crimson handkerchief to an umbrella and brandishing it above his head. Being on the face of him a creature who never, if he could avoid it, put his hand to honest labor, he naturally addressed the crowd at large as “Fellow workers.” These things awoke a slight humorous interest; and because the man had the gift of glib and striking speech, the crowd continued to listen after the first pricking up of their ears.

The man’s discourse need not be reported in detail. He was an anarchist, red, rampant, and ruthless; and by means of arguments, some warped, some fair enough, he pointed out to his hearers that the mission of the _Port Edes_ was another knife-thrust of capital into the ribs of labor. The statement met with a very mixed reception, but the anarchist silenced both the jeers and the applause with a beseeching wave of his hand, and followed along the curb of the wharf the steamer, which was commencing to float towards the dock gates. He spoke to those on board her now rather than to his more immediate following, and unclean faces stared at him from over the line of bulwarks.

“To any man of you who values life,” he cried, “I offer a solemn warning. That ship is doomed; she will sink in mid-ocean, blown apart by our petards, and her ill-gotten cargo will be hurled out of capital’s reach forever. Those who are misguided enough to be her guardians will be blown into space. Listen, you men of her crew. Jump on the pier-head yonder as she passes into the basin, and take the consequences. The brutal laws of this country will hurl you into prison; but better a season dragging out a martyr’s sentence, than death as an enemy to the workers’ cause.”

At this point the strong right hand of the law descended on to the speaker’s elbow; and then, because he attempted to resist, the willing right knee of the law jerked up suddenly into the small of that anarchist’s back; after which he was haled ignominiously to a police-station, and the place of his speaking knew him no more.

But the fellow’s threats had not been without their result. Every hand on the _Port Edes_’ deck had heard them distinctly, and disquiet arose under the belts of nine out of ten. The mates grew nervous and the men inattentive; and, from the bridge, Captain Kettle’s voice and whistle kept ringing out with biting clearness. As it was, only one man attempted to put the warning into practical effect. He was a miserable, half-clad wretch, a coal-trimmer by rating, already repentant of the spell of physical toil which he had signed on for.

Passing through the lock-gates into the basin, the steamer’s port quarter swung gently towards the wall. A sailor, in readiness, dropped from above and ran aft with the lanyard of a cork fender. The trimmer jumped on the bulwarks, and one might have thought that he was going to bear a hand—an unnecessary hand. The sailor did so, and cursed him for his officiousness. The donkeyman, however, who was oiling the after-winch, had other ideas on the subject, and stood by for a rush. So it befell when that trimmer was getting himself ready for a spring back on the quay-head, the donkeyman’s long legs took him rapidly across the red iron decks, and when the trimmer was already in mid-air, the donkeyman’s huge paw descended upon the slack of his black breeches, and drew him back as though he possessed the weight of a feather pillow. Whereat the crowd at the pier-head yelled with delighted laughter, and the dingy steamer made her way stolidly on to the muddy waters of the Mersey ebb, which bubbled against the lip of the walls beyond.

“Curse you!” snarled the trimmer, “what’s that for?”

“Because we’re short-manned in the stokehold already, me son; an’ if there’s a hand goes, it’s meself that’ll have to stand watch and watch in his place. Havin’ got you, I shall be a jintleman now, and slape in my bed at night all the way to New Orleans. See that?”

“This mucky old tramp’ll be blowed up sure’s death, and I shall be killed.”

“Well, bless me!” retorted the donkeyman; “who’d miss you if you was killed—always supposing you weren’t wanted for our furnaces? Here, get up, you half-baked scum of the workhouse, and tumble below. Thank your stars the old man hasn’t seen you from the bridge. But don’t give me any more of your lip, or I’ll report you to him and the chief to boot. Now, _mosey_.”

The coal-trimmer blew his nose on his gray neck-handkerchief, and shambled off below, muttering. The donkeyman returned to his winch, unbent the chain, and sent it down into the adjacent hold. Then he retired to the poop deck-house, where he lived with the carpenter and boatswain, and offered to bet those worthies (who had just come in for dinner) that Captain Kettle shot some one on board before the _Port Edes_ tied up against New Orleans levee.

“He’s a just holy terror, our old man,” observed the donkeyman cheerfully. “I sailed with him once before, and he unbent a quartermaster’s front teeth with the bridge telescope before we were three days out. With the smudgy crowd we’ve got here now, it’s a pound to a brick they start him moving, even sooner than that. Not that I mind myself. Sea’s dull enough as a general thing, and I like to see a bit of life throwing about. And at that game, little Red Kettle’s good as a Yankee skipper any day.”