Shipmates in sunshine; the romance of a Caribbean cruise

Chapter I

“ A small black hand-bag — not very small — ordinary size. It must be somewhere.”

“ Who did you give it to, sir?” asked the Steward.

“ A porter or somebody; I took it for granted that he belonged to the Company.”

“ To the ship’s company, sir? ”

“ The Company — the Company — the Railway Company. Hang it all ! is there no one looking after the passengers’ luggage? Such mismanagement! It had a patch on the bottom — the left-hand corner as you unlock it, and one of the brass studs where you clasp it was missing.”

“ Was it labeled, sir? ”

“ No, it wasn’t labeled, but there was a place for a label — a leather label-holder. I should know it in a minute. Where’s the Captain? To think that I should have traveled all over England and once to Ireland, too — the very heart of Ireland — with that bag, and it never got lost until the present moment! The man offered to carry it aboard for me. I had my 1 rug on my arm and I didn’t want my deck-chair to be smashed to atoms — I know what these steamers are — I’ve been to Ireland, and I was at the Naval Review. ’ ’

‘ £ I say, Steward, am I to have a cabin to myself ? They promised me one at the office.”

“ What number, sir? ”

“ Very sorry, sir, Purser was compelled to put some one else in your second bunk.”

‘ ‘ Oh, confound it ! Is it a man or a woman ? ’ ’

“ Only another gentleman, sir.”

“ Oh, well, that’s not so bad as it might be. Does he snore? ”

“ Can’t say, sir, he’s a stranger to me.”

“ If he snores I’ll throw him into the scuppers — be sure you tell him that. ’ ’

“ Yessir.” ■

“ Are you the Captain, please? ”

‘ ‘ No, Miss, I ’m the Steward. ’ ’

There was a note of indignation in the disclaimer : the Steward had no mind to be taken for so commonplace an official as the Captain. How would the third officer like to be taken for the Doctor?

“ Perhaps you will do as well. I want to know if I can have some of the small-sized Spratt’s dog-biscuits — not for myself; but I saw a stray cat — I really think it might have been a half-Persian — I fancy that the small size would be best.”

“ I say, Steward, can we choose any places that we 2 please in the saloon? The fact is that my wife can’t endure the sight of a nigger. If I had known that there were nigger waiters aboard this steamer I shouldn ’t have come. Could you manage to keep them in another part of the ship while the meals are going on? It might be serious— it might indeed; she is in a very weak state of health- — that ’s why we are going on this voyage. ’ ’

‘ ‘ Is the Steward there ? Oh, are you the Steward ? Then perhaps you can tell me what’s the name of this steamer that we’re aboard of and where we’re bound for ? It’s not idle curiosity on my part that makes me ask you, only if it ’s the Avon bound for the West Indies, it is twenty minutes past its advertised time for sailing. Now, I’ve an appointment at Cuadaloupe and if I miss it, I’ll hold the company responsible, so you just ”

“ Plang it all, Steward, what do you mean by allowing my stable-companion to pile up our cabin with his things ? Three portmanteaux, a cabin-trunk, a suitcase, a hold-all, a lunch-basket, and a net-sack bursting with novels — the worst trash ! I don ’t want to make a row, so you’d best come along and fix up things before I hoof him and his blessed- ”

“ Mister — Steward — can my wife have a cup of tea and a biscuit before lunch? It’s the only thing she fancies and ’ ’

‘ 4 Where ’s the Steward ? How is it that he ’s never where he’s wanted? What sort of management — oh, are you the Steward? ”

“ Yessir.”

‘ ‘ Then maybe yon can oblige me with a halfpenny stamp. ’ '

I thought it well at this point to get on deck. I had been standing in the companion of the Royal Mail Steamer Avon since the arrival of the special train from Waterloo a quarter of an hour before, being anxious to find out if the Steward of an ocean-going steamer continues to be baited by newly arrived passengers as freely as he used to be in the old days of my seafaring. I thought that I had heard enough evidence to go on with. Only one train-load of passengers had come aboard the Avon, and . of these no inconsiderable portion were wrestling with deck-chairs. They would soon be free to put their inquiries to the Steward and keep him from having many moments of graceful leisure until the second train arrived. After that I felt sure that he would be constantly employed. In every steamer on which I have yet sailed the Steward is looked on by the passengers as is the Secretary of a club by the members — as are the correspondence columns of the country newspaper by “ Constant Subscriber , 9 ’ “Ratepayer,” and “Pro Bono Publico ” — as was the safety-valve of an old-fashioned engine by the old-fashioned engineer.

But the Steward is no more sensitive than a policeman, a megaphone, or the Official Receiver. You may unburden yourself of every grievance before him without causing him to think the better of you — or the worse. And he looks so very human all the time that 4 people are telling him of their wrongs, though in reality they might as well go to a grain-elevator. He is possibly the most useful of the ship ’s company, and it is said that he makes it pay to be civil to all the aggrieved, and to change foreign money into English at the rate of thirty francs to the sovereign.

The month was January and the Steamship Avon was alongside the dock breastwork at Southampton at the point of casting off for the West Indies. The day which we had left behind us at Waterloo was such a one as the late Monsieur Zola would have described with feeling and — if he had gone far enough — accuracy. The morning had been breathing heavily about Waterloo Station like a dozing debauchee after a drinksodden night. Its squalor, as it hung reeking over the Thames, breathing visibly, malodorously, perspiringly, was appalling. The morning had stumbled out of the gutter into the stable and then had crawled into Waterloo Station to see us off. We turned aside from its moist and musty good-by; but still we felt its heavyhanging breath, reeking of a mixture of the stable and the kennel.

And then suddenly through the reek of this Zolaesque atmosphere there flashed before my eyes the white label of a trunk inscribed ‘ ‘ J amaica. ’ ’

In an instant I had passed from Zola to Pierre Loti. The mist vanished and the mire was banished. There came before me a vision of an ocean island bathed in balm — that was the word which the vision whispered to me — balm, with its gracious rhymes of 5

“ palm ” and “ calm/’ clinging about my brain as faint echoes of something musical hover about the mixed marbles of the Baptistry at Pisa. I had a whiff of a coral lagoon — the dawn was pearling over it, with the floss of a lazy-breaking wave in the distance. . . .

And then a truck-load of luggage labeled 4 4 Port of Spain ” pulled up beside me — a couple of wooden boxes with “ Dominica ” painted on their sides were flung contemptuously at my feet by a porter, and another came up with my own portmanteau and deck-chair transfigured by a halo inscribed “ Barbados.” I did not need anything more to make me forget the dreariness of that dripping morning. The magic of the names of these places was enough to banish everything that lacked the elements of romance from my mind. A few months before I was waiting at an insignificant junction in the south of Ireland, when a long line of carriages ran up at the platform and the porters opened the doors shouting :

“ Change here for Ameriky — change here for Ameriky! ”

I learned that the train was full of emigrants bound for Queenstown, where they were to embark for New York ; but most of them knew nothing beyond the fact that they wanted to go to America ; so the porters were tactful enough to refrain from introducing a complication of issues.

I was in hopes that when our special should come to the platform the guard would shout :

“ Embark here for the Spanish Main! 99

That was my objective — the Spanish Main. We were exchanging the gloom of a London January fog for the glory of a tropical archipelago — the sullen, sodden London street for the glow of a garden of sunshine.

And now I was aboard the Steamship Avon and had already put a question or two to the Steward and had played the eavesdropper while my fellow-passengers had elbowed themselves forward to follow up my questions.

And if my companions in the companion proved to be part and parcel of those with whom I had voyaged East and West and North and South in the old days, my shipmates whom I found on the upper deck differed in no respect from any whom I remembered on decks that have long ago been “ scrapped.” I could not help thinking, too, that the steamer on which I had now embarked was remarkably like one on which I had made a trip to the Cape ; I really felt equal to finding my way without a guide to any part of the ship. The best ghost-story in existence is that of the lady who was accustomed to have a curious dream of wandering through a house that was strange to her in her waking moments. Some time afterward she went down to stay in a part of England where she had never been before, and, when there, was taken to pay a visit to a house that had the reputation of being haunted. At once she recognized the house of her frequent dream, and was able to direct her husband to certain rooms and describe their contents. A day or two later she met 7 the lady whose house it was, and this one started violently on seeing her visitor. The conversation, never very fluent, turned upon the household ghost.

“ Is it a man or a woman ghost? ” inquired the lady.

“ A woman,” replied the other gravely.

‘ * I did not see her during the three nights I slept there,” said the first.

“ No, no, you would not see her, you — you would not.”

“ Why should not I, as well as any one else, see her? ”

“ You could not, because you are She,” was the tremulous answer.

Now, I felt in regard to this ship as the ghost-lady must have felt on entering the house of her dream : I had a feeling that I was once again a passenger on the old Union-Castle liner, Boer, and I felt quite at home on the deck of this Avon, and thought it a happy coincidence that I should, after the lapse of a good many years, find myself a passenger on the sister ship to the Boer. I strolled up to the bridge and passing a deckhoiQe, I saw upon the bell the name Boer engraved in bold letters.

What a start I got! How in heaven’s name had I been idiot enough to embark on the Cape-liner Boer when I had booked my passage to the West Indies by the Royal Mail Avon? I made a dive for the hand-rail, hoping that I might still be in time to get my luggage transshipped, when my eyes lighted on a life- 8 buoy painted with the name Avon. A mulatto quartermaster passed me and on his cap was the name Avon in letters of pure gold. At that moment I felt more like the ghost-lady than ever. I was having my dream of haunting a ship’s deck, and I could hardly distinguish it from an incipient nightmare.

Would you mind letting me know what is the name of this steamer? ” I asked of a gentleman who had just come upon the bridge.

He looked at me as if — well, as I expected he would look.

“ No, I haven’t lunched yet,” I said in reply to the words that he caught in his teeth as they were coming naturally from him. “ No, but having seen the name Boer on a bell, and recognizing some things aboard the vessel which were also aboard the Boer — but you see Avon on the life-buoy and ”

The gentleman laughed.

“ You are not to blame; your eyes did not deceive you,” said he. “ The fact is that this steamer was the old Boer, and when she got too much out of date for the Union-Castle the Royal Mail bought her and called her the Avon. What is obsolete on the Union-C&£tle is a striking innovation on the Royal Mail.”

“ Oh. But the Boer ”

“ Yes, she’s a bit venerable. But so is the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, and the officers are entitled by their charter to wear side-arms. When a steamer has grown old in crime under another houseflag, she continues her career under an alias in the 9 service of the Royal Mail. Good old Boer, she’s as criminal as ever ; but she may roll across the Atlantic once or twice still before being made amenable to justice. She ’ll scrap well. ’ ’

‘ * She was a bit of a roller in the old days, ’ ’ said I.

4 ‘ She may have got steadier in her old age, ’ ’ said he.

I felt doubtful on this point. I went below wondering if it was because the Royal Mail is the oldest Steam Packet Company in the world, that it is considered de rigueur to have a fleet of the oldest steamers afloat. Personally my heart leaps up when I behold a gallant ship that has survived the storms of a hundred years and the policy of scuttle which unscrupulous owners maintained in the ante-Plimsollian days; but like Bob Acres ’s ancestors, they are the last sort that I should wish to have a visiting acquaintance with. I prefer sailing in something less venerable but of more velocity. These ten-knot greyhounds do not appeal to me. They are lacking in spirit. They are too full of groanings and too greatly afflicted by the ague-shakes to be pleasant on a voyage of any duration. An old sterner painted and varnished and made to look jauntily modern is as pitiable a companion as an old beau who fondly fancies that the five hairs which he pastes carefully across his poll conceal his baldness, and that a wispy mustache with the ends waxed brings back the freshness of youth.

But the Boer, alias Avon, may still, I think, not deserve to be as black as she is painted. Beneath that 10 too fresh exterior there may be a comfortable cabin or two, just as we used to be told in the ancient Adelphi dramas that beneath the moleskin waistcoat of the honest Yorkshireman a true heart may beat ; only the honest Yorkshireman ’s waistcoat was not just as fresh as paint.

“ Are you a passenger, sir? ” I was asked by a middle-aged gentleman in the smoking-room, whither I retired out of a slant of sudden rain.

I admitted that I had a tourist’s ticket, and he gave me to understand that he approved of the step which I proposed taking.

“ You are right — quite right,” he said with a wave of the hand. “ I’ve just been telling the gentlemen here ” — he gave a wave in the direction of half a dozen loiterers— “ of the advantages of travel. I repeat that it expands the mind — there’s nothing expands the mind like travel. You’ll always know a man that has traveled. There ’s something in the way he talks — a kind of confidence ”

“ You are coming the round of the islands? ” I asked.

“ No, not this time, sir. I’m a commercial, and I find it difficult to get away for more than a fortnight now and then, but I always spend that fortnight knocking about — I ’ve been as far north as Edinburgh in my time; that shows you that I’ve always been a believer in traveling. I tell you that it — it expands the mind. Look at me, for example ; I ’m not going to the West Indies, but — just think of it — yesterday I 11 was at Portsmouth, here I am to-day at Southampton,

and heaven only knows where I may be to-morrow

maybe, Bournemouth ! ’ ’

He made this revelation to us with bated breath, and then looked round from man to man to see what effect it had upon us.

When we were all silent, he seemed thoroughly satisfied. There was a gleam of triumph in his eyes — he had silenced us. We had no word to say to the detriment of travel as an expander of the mind.

Chapter II

It would, of course, be ridiculous to expect that the romance of the voyage will develop itself before the eyes of the recorder until the steamer is out of soundings ; but it is as well to be on the qui vive. Already I have seen a young woman whose eyes suggest great possibilities. They seem to me to be most companionable eyes — not too deep to make a man feel hopeless when they rest upon him — not so full of spirituality as to be devoid of spirit — not so intellectual as to be devoid of intelligence. She is with an elderly man: he might either be her father or her husband, I thought when we sat down to lunch. I rather hoped that he might be the latter. The recorder of romance grows very hopeful when a young woman with companionable eyes and a husband whom strangers sometimes take for her father ‘ ‘ swims into his ken. ’ ’ But before lunch is over I perceive from the attention which he bestows upon her that he is her father. He does not treat her with that indifference which is the result of possession with propinquity. But I am not without hopes of her. She may give that father of hers trouble yet. A father is a stone that is thrown into the stream of true love to prevent its running too smooth.

But she may not after all set the pattern for the romance of the voyage. The Fates do not always work with silken threads. When, having suspended the operation of spinning out the various fibers that come under their hands, they set about weaving one of their crazy-quilts, they work after the manner of lunatics (we think) — snatching up skeins at haphazard — one of silk at the right hand, one of cotton at the left, twisting them together for the warp in their loom, and then making a mad woof of worsted it may be — perhaps jute — one fiber will serve as well as another. The instant that the shuttles are filled they set their loom in motion, mixing up human lives incongruously, irregularly, but irresistibly, without referring to any design — without caring in the least what happens so long as something comes out at the other end of the loom. Pattern is no object, harmony of coloring is not studied by the weavers ; equality of surface, delicacy of finish, perfection of detail are totally neglected. The threads are woven together by the shooting shuttle and they may writhe and strain and become attenuated in the process — it matters nothing to the weavers. They have the shears handy and the knots are simply dealt with — the Fates do not bother unloosing knots, but they do a deal of snipping in the course of their weaving. The result of their unprincipled labor is ludicrous, but it serves. It must serve. It is a jail quilt : a thing to grumble at — to swear at, but to be endured all the same. Sometimes it becomes endurable — sometimes it seems even luxurious. Heav- 14 ens ! When one examines the materials of which it is made and knows of the rudimentary character of the machine which turned it out, one ceases to wonder that the thing is so foolish : the wonder is that it serves its purpose so well.

Its purpose?

But that is where the jest comes in ; for the Fates weave for the fun of the thing : they do not work with a purpose. That is how it comes that a recorder is never without hope. He knows that the only essential to the weaving of that craziest of crazy-quilts, romance, is incongruity. He knows that no woman that ever lived is commonplace, so he hopes and is not afraid.

After all it may be that that girl with the prominent teeth and the good-humored smile will prove the spoiled darling of the Fates and cause the ship to be set on fire by some inflammatory youth who aims at rescuing her and her alone out of all the ship’s company. Who can tell ?

At any rate here is plenty of material for the weaving. The saloon is quite crowded at lunch — hearing the meal called lunch instead of tiffin, makes me feel that we are on the way to the West, not the East — and there is incongruity enough to satisfy the most jocular Fate. People who are saying good-by to friends are partaking of lunch with them, so that it is impossible to say who are the passengers and who will go ashore when the steamer casts off her moorings. But I rather hope that if it is ordained that either the 15 young woman with the companionable eyes or her father must go ashore, it will be the father who will do so.

But I think that when the time comes to choose a place at a table I will choose one at another table than that at which this particular young woman sits.

And I certainly will not choose one at the table which may be selected by a man whom I have just encountered and who assures me that he remembers me years ago. I came upon him in the smoking-room and found that he had theories on the making of cocktails. He offered to place his experience at my disposal, and altogether showed himself to be so friendly that I knew he could not have been an old friend. An old friend never tries to show you that he is an old friend. He simply is one.

And then the bell rang for the ship to be cleared, and the usual business of saying good-by began. There was nothing affecting about any of the partings at the steamer's rail. They all suggested a certain polite restraint. No one associates danger with the deep nowadays. I believe that it has been proved by statistics that if one devotes one's life to making the passage of the Atlantic one will live to the age of one hundred and eighty-two; only one must never go ashore. The moment that one goes ashore the risk begins.

There was really no farewell spoken, only au revoir. A young woman close to where I was standing was assuring her sister that she would be back in time for Mrs. Griff en’s dance in March, and a youth who 16 seemed to be on terms of expectant friendship with the sister, asked her to keep the first polka for him, the second extra and the last valse but three.

The hawsers were cast off without emotion. I could see in many faces on shore a certain expression of rerelief when the engine-room bell began to tinkle its

Stand by. ’ ’ Several times I had noticed during the previous two hours a general expression on every countenance that said as plainly as possible :

‘ ‘ Is the thing never going to clear off ? ’ 1 As a matter of fact I heard this question asked both afloat and ashore, and when at last the clearing off took place there was plenty of smiling.

Very different indeed was this scene of chastened farewell from one which I had witnessed in the south of Ireland the month before. I had heard the sound of that extravagance of alternate lamentation and jubilation, which seems to be the essence of the Irish temperament, in the neighborhood of one of those hideous zinc-roofed, comfortable houses which have during the past ten years taken the place of the picturesque squalid cabins.

“ What’s going on there— a wake? ” I asked the groom.

’Tis a live wake, sir, that they’re having,” he replied with an unstifled sigh, that told me that ’twas himself was longing to join the jubilant mourners.

“ A live wake ? ” said I ; for I had never heard the expression before.

“ A live wake, sir. ’Tis Timmy O’Ryan that’s immigrating from here to Ameriky, and as his widdy mother is nigh upon eighty, ’tis the same as burying him that it is to her and the rest of the family, so they’re having times of it till the morning.”

“ Oh, that’s a live wake? ” said I, and as the dogcart went round the curve of the black road I could hear the fitful wail of this melancholy festivity when any one opened the door of the cottage for a second or two. The sound burst forth as do the flames of a locomotive furnace when the stoker opens the door to stoke.

I chanced to be at the railway station the next day when the O’Ryan was sloping slowly to the West — a stripling of forty-five or thereabouts. There were a score or so of his friends of both sexes seeing him off, and it seemed to be etiquette to pay no attention whatever to the hero of the occasion so long as the train was not in sight. The people chatted and joked and were silent among themselves all this time, and Mr. O’Ryan was treated with absolute indifference. Plis isolation was chilling. But the moment that the train appeared — the visible shape of an awful, irresistible Destiny — there was a murmur, and the murmur broadened into a wail. The women threw themselves upon the man ’s shoulders with floods of tears and all the variations of grief articulate, and the men crushed in upon him with outstretched hands and continuous cries of “ Good luck to ye, Timmy! ” “ God save ye, Timmy! ”

* ‘ Safe over, Tim, my man ! ’ ’

They were all clinging to him, and he had to fight his way through them to get at his box, when the guard of the train— Chorus of the wrought-iron Monster of Destiny — called out his callous formula :

* ‘ Queenstown train — all take your seats. ’ ’

It needed the efforts of all the staff of the station to disentangle Timothy O’Ryan from his friends and bundle him with his bundles into a carriage. And when their official duties were discharged the station staff became ordinary human beings again, and all had to say farewell to the man on their own account.

The crescendo of the babel of good-bys was reached when the guard, with the air of a noble Roman father giving the order for the decapitation of his best friend for the good of Rome, blew his whistle. A hundred hands were stretched forth to the window which Mr. O’Ryan fully occupied; hats were waved — handkerchiefs — mufflers — blackthorns — pipes and one empty bottle. The crowd ran alongside the train as it steamed out of the station — yelling and weeping and praying and hurling good wishes after the man.

The three porters became for the moment like the brave Horatius and his companions — more Roman fathers — holding back the surging crowd, and then they jumped upon the foot-board and shook the man by the hand as he leaned with half his body out of the window.

That was something like a parting. But alongside the dock at Southampton there was scarcely a hand- 19 kerchief seen — I believe that I did see one ; it was being waved, not used to conceal emotion.

Every one seemed glad that even this unemotional formality was over. No one glanced back at the dockside. We were free to look after our own comforts and to admire the winter view of the Solent.

Now that a separation had been made between the passengers and their friends who had come to see them off, I could give undivided attention to my materiel. But of all the humiliating habits to acquire, that of speculating upon one’s fellow creatures is the most egregious if it is also the most fascinating. My experience has long ago taught me that it is the utterest folly making out among the people whom one meets, a cast for any particular romance that one may invent. And yet I can never resist the temptation of doing so, and on the most conventional lines. The humiliations to which I am subjected by remorseless actuality are not in the least discouraging. When I have made up my mind that that exquisite girl who sits shyly in a corner of a railway carriage, has acquired her expression of habitual sadness owing to the cruelty of her father who wants her to marry a rich outside broker in order to save his own tottering fortunes — she, I feel, is too spirituelle even for a member of the Stock Exchange — I am quite ready to make her cause my own, and do my best to bring that hardened old man who is ready to sell his own flesh and blood, to see the evil of his ways. But when the spirituelle girl leans pathetically out of the window at the next station and calls to the newsboy 20 to bring her ‘ ‘ all the winners, ’ ’ and when I hear her explain to the cruel elderly man beside her, how the scratching of Porcupine at the eleventh hour was a stable dodge in order to put an extra six pounds upon Orfull for the Oaks, I am led to feel that this particular young lady is after all not too bright or good to be the wife of a company promoter.