“Oh, shut up,” I said. “You are pulling my leg because I am but a poor foreigner. You are a five-letter man, Peter.”
“Four,” he said, diffidently.
“I meant four. And I happen to know that you have some sweet pickles in your dunnage …”
“True!” he cried happily. “What’s more, I have the crusty bottom of a loaf inside my shirt, still hot from the galley, and, under my bunk, unless unscrupulous people have purloined them, there is a crock of butter and a pot of mustard.”
“Then what the damnation are we standing here for, arguing and quaking with cold and wet?”
“Hold on to me Karli; I shall lead the way.”
No one, in the face of Peter’s good humour and careless courage, could have been so base as to fear the elements. At every instant there was sure evidence – at least, so it seemed to me – that our little craft – it seemed very little now amidst those monstrous seas – had not the least chance of living through the storm but I was shamed out of all cowardice by Peter’s pleasant teasing whenever he ducked into the cabin for dry clothes and by the child-like way he fell asleep between watches. Indeed, the very fact that he had spells between watches at all was a sort of comfort: with the ship being shaken about like dice in a cup to the incessant bellowing of the gale and the crash of seas I should have thought that every able officer and man would have been on deck, shouting useful orders or pulling at ropes or making promises to his Maker. That men could be spared from the horrors of the deck and that, when so spared, they could fold their hands in sleep was to me both a marvel and a reassurance.
Clearly, such weather could not continue: there was not enough wind on the globe nor enough rain in the firmament to sustain such savagery for many hours. I was wrong; the fury continued unabated until even I lost my fear of it and contrived to wash and shave and shift my under-linen, toppling about the cabin like a drunken man. Little Orace staggered in manfully from time to time, his face drawn and green, bearing a kid of cold food (for of course the galley fire was still dowsed) and taking away my clothes for washing. His courage helped to make an Englishman of me for the time being: it was not so much that I was loath to disgrace myself in front of him, more that I did not wish to make him unhappy at having an unworthy master. What irrational people we English are, to be sure. Perhaps you, who were born here, have not observed this but to me, born amongst the sensible Dutch canals, it is sharply apparent.
Our skirting of the Bay took an inordinate time because, as I have said, we durst not go about on the port tack and were constrained to sail close-hauled – the yards braced up, the sheets well home and the bowlines bowsed down so taut that they squealed. (This last, Peter explained, was to stop the sails shivering. I was too proud to ask him for a similar remedy for me.)
After an eternity – perhaps seventy-two hours – I awoke one morning to find that the ship was only rolling and yawing in a way which I might have thought alarming a week before but which was now no more than pleasantly lulling.
“Come along, Karli!” cried Peter, his eyes red and squinting with fatigue, “we are weathering Finisterre, and a deuced fine landfall the Captain has made, I must say, although a little close for comfort – a mere couple of cables from the breakers.”
I closed my eyes.
“Tell me when we are clear of these breakers,” I said. “It seems to me that the perils of the sea do not improve upon acquaintance. This Finisterre is just another Ushant, is it not?”
“Yes, Karli. But in Spain. It is of little interest, I agree.”
“Good,” I said.
“Of course,” he added, “when I call you again, after we are clear of the breakers, there will be no breakfast left. The Doctor has had the galley fire alight for two hours now and he will be disappointed that you would not try his kedgeree: he prides himself upon it. But it is only a savoury mess of rice and little fragments of smoked had-dock and onions and such stuff, made aromatic with his kari-sauce such as is famed all over the seven seas …”
“Peter, your blandishments do not move me at all. I am not one of those who live for their bellies.”
“No, Karli.”
“On the other hand, it is important that I should not affront the Doctor, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes, Karli.”
“Then I shall make the sacrifice and pretend to own an appetite. For his sake and yours.”
“What a splendid chap you are, to be sure.”
I threw a book at him and, while I was laughing, he popped a slippery cake of soap into my open mouth.
Kedgeree is very good. I reserved some for later on in the morning, to ascertain whether it is also good when cold.
It is also very good when cold.
Venturing upon deck in the mid-morning, to take the air and aid digestion, I encountered the First Mate, Lubbock.
“Good morning, Mister,” I cried airily. He stepped very close to me, I could smell the rank sweat of him.
“Only a Captain calls a First Officer ‘Mister’,” he snarled. “Nasty little snot-nosed lubbers of supercargoes call me ‘Sir’ or by the great horned toad I chew them up and spit out their gristly bits – if any.”
I had a decision to make. With an effort I met his eyes; studied the gravy-coloured whites of them.
“Thankyou, Mr Lubbock,” I said at last. “It is a fine morning, is it not?” I was ready to jump over the side if necessary, but I do not think that he recognised this. He, too, made a decision and an effort; decided to be jocular.
“Well,” he said, “bully for you to make the deck: thought the sea-sickness had turned you clear inside-out; haven’t heard the dad-blamed ship’s bell for days on account of your retching and puking.” I let that pass; it might have been an American sort of joke. Moreover, it became necessary for him at just that moment to rave and bellow at a number of seamen who were heaving at a fall – which is a kind of a rope – so I had ample time to prepare a rejoinder. He turned towards me again, affecting surprise to see me still there.
“Where are we?” I asked civilly, “Mr Lubbock?” He glared at first, then studied me intently. His small brain, I think, was puzzling out what to say to me. In the end, what he decided to say was “We are scudding south along the coast of Portugal, Mister Van Cleef. Jest as soon as the wind backs a little more we’ll likely lay a course for the Grand Canary. That’s an island, Mr Van Cleef; off the coast of Africky – belongs to the Portu-geeses.” He broke off to roar dirty words at a small gang of seamen who were trying to snub a little more of a brace: they did not seem to mind, nor indeed to pay much attention, for they were intent upon their work and had ears only for their boatswain, a cheery fellow who knew just how much they could do and would press them no further.
“Thankyou, Sir,” I said, for I was curious as to what he would think of this gratuitous form of address. He glared at me suspiciously: I gazed back amicably.
“You’re welcome,” he said, turning on his heel.
The weather ameliorated: before I was prepared for it we were entering the skirts of the Tropics; each hour of southward sailing seemed to call for the shedding of another article of clothing. Had it not been for the irksome presence of Lubbock, my worries about the Captain’s sanity, and the fretful lust which Blanche’s occasional appearances evoked in me, I swear I would have been as happy a man as my kind, careless, poxy Peter Stevenage. Only thrice a day did my horizons clear, for the Doctor’s skill and invention did not abate: each succeeding meal was a new, often bizarre, delight and, in the interims, one could always be sure that there was a “tabnab” to be had in the galley for any poor, perished, half-drowned seaman or any supernumerary officer who had had the foresight to give the Doctor a half-sovereign. These “tabnabs” were little gullet-tickling confections which the Doctor threw together when he was doing nothing else, for it was not in his nature to refrain from cooking, it was his very life, nor could he bear to waste any little oddments of food. Furthermore, he was full of concern and compassi
on for us all, ever concerned to make us fat and contented. He was, in a way, somewhat like my mother. My favourite “tabnab” was, without question, a little fried potato-cake with a morsel of kari’d mutton inside or perhaps a tasty scrap of cod’s sound. Sometimes, too, he would fill one’s pocket with small, folded-over pieces of pastry, filled with all manner of things, so that, munching at random, one might make a surprising, Lilliputian luncheon of marmalade, then chicken, then apple and finally fish: each course but a mouthful, each mouthful a delightful shock to the palate. Although I have never allowed myself to become preoccupied with food and drink, I must confess that the Doctor’s ministrations helped me to while away the time and forget the perils of the deep.
Meanwhile, the weather became more and more intent to please and light airs wafted us southward towards the fabled Grand Canary. Soon the sailor-folk had cast off their coarse weather-proof attire and had donned duck trowsers and straw hats, whilst we officers had our servants press our linen unmentionables and soon we revelled in the coolness of sea-island cotton shirts. Life became delicious except for those wretches who lusted after women.
Chapter Nine
Again it was Sunday – how far apart the Sundays seem to those of us in peril on the sea – and the Captain conducted Divine Service as though he were chewing something unpleasant. His own, private religious notions comprised some sort of hysterical mysticism but I never quite understood what they were, although he made it clear that there was no place in them for the Established Church of England, which he called “a shabby, money-grubbing conspiracy against the layman”. He had some personal agreement with God which was not clear to me. Blanche was constrained by him to attend Service, always in a light and seductive dress, “so as to give,” the Captain said, “a bad example and to keep the ship’s people’s minds off the damned, blasphemous mummery.”
After the service he read, in a high, clear voice, the Ship’s Articles and then – strangely – the Articles of War, as though he were still in command of a Queen’s Ship. This was one of his little eccentricities, I thought, but I learned later that every before-the-mast sailor had gladly signed a chit stating that he would be bound by man-o’war’s rules – which included flogging for breaches of discipline – and that this was not uncommon in East Indiamen and crack China clippers. At that time, however, my blood ran cold as he read out these Articles, for they listed countless offences and the condign punishments attached to them: each paragraph seemed to end with the words “… death or such lesser punishment …” but the men appeared to be asleep on their feet in the drugging sunshine, their half-closed eyes furtively fixed on the charming effect of the sunbeams piercing through Blanche’s clothes. She was not in the habit of standing demurely, her feet together.
When the ritual was finished and Blanche had disappeared into her cabin, the men ran back to the forecastle laughing and chattering like children released from school. One man from each mess was soon at the galley door to fill a bucket with the boiling water which the Doctor had readied; piggins were streamed overside on lines to raise sea-water and soon the ratlines were gay with the men’s laundry-work, for sailors are cleanly folk when given the opportunity: a dirty seaman soon becomes infested with vermin and will be much persecuted by his mates. At sea, moreover, there is no telling when the next chance to wash – still less to dry – one’s clothes will arrive, and a seasoned sailor loses no opportunity to fill his chest with clean, dry slops. Only those who have lived and worked and slept in sea-soaked clothes for ten days at a time can know what exquisite pleasure there is to be had from a clean, dry shirt and drawers. Later in the voyage, when the weather had been unremittingly foul and there was not a dry clout in the forecastle, the ever-kindly Doctor would often contrive to find room in his crowded galley to dry at least a strip of old cotton-goods for those who were courteous or generous towards him: these strips they would wrap about their private parts before going on watch so that at least those sensitive organs escaped, for a little while, the almost unendurable chill and chafing.
It was understood in those days that any women on board a ship would keep to their quarters after Service of a Sunday, so that the men might strip to the buff and, having washed every stitch they owned, romp naked in the sunshine. Peter and I strolled through the throng, exchanging genial and cheery words with the men. Some of these had their own little business concerns: one resourceful fellow, for instance, known to all as “Lousy”, had a charcoal-filled tailor’s ironing-goose which, for a trifling sum in coin or grog, he would run along the seams of any shirt or pair of drawers suspected by its owner of harbouring lice. Only this treatment, Peter assured me, would extirpate these small and pestilent inquilines.
Another, humbler practitioner had for his stock-in-trade only a piece of “pusser’s green”, which is a coarse yellow soap sold by purser. His practice was, having exacted a modest fee, to scrutinise his client from the soles to the scalp, dabbing deftly at fleas and other small deer. Each time he caught one he would carry the soap to his mouth, kill the flea or bed-bug with his teeth and, at the same time, re-moisten the soap with a flick of his tongue. The men did not much despise him, for it was a useful art and he was skilful at it. Orace was in the thick of things, scrubbing away with the best of them and from time to time fending off the clumsy advances of a sexual pervert. The pervert would not, in fact, be allowed to corrupt him, Peter assured me, because Orace was liked by the crew for his sunny nature.
The sexual society of a ship’s company was, you see, a delicate and tolerant arrangement because all experienced seamen knew that to live together in a forecastle for perhaps three long years calls for a spirit of live-and-let-live, so long as the eccentric’s private habits do not interfere with those of his mates, with the safe working of the ship and, above all, with their right to sleep undisturbed. Thus, the few sodomites and catamites aboard were soon recognised and tolerated so long as they kept within their own circle, did not offend others and did not shirk their work. Onanism was as necessary as going to “the head” and had only to be conducted silently if others were trying to sleep. (“When I’m at home, my wife is my right hand,” Bully Lubbock once said to me in his coarse fashion; “when I’m at sea my right hand is my wife.”) Then, during a long spell between ports, a full-blooded fellow of normal tastes might well exchange a sodomitic practice with a chum, rather than go out of his mind. This has given rise to the British saying “any port in a storm, matey”.
None of this, however, is to be taken as suggesting that ships – the John Coram in particular – were seething with animal lust. On the contrary, a good taut ship kept the men so cheerfully busy that there was neither the time nor the vitality to spare upon such trivia. It was the practice to see that the crew went to their hammocks so drugged with out-of-doors work and indigestible food that all they craved was sleep. A truly tired man, his muscles twitching with toil, his mind relaxing from perilous hours spent fighting sail-cloth in the dark, higher than a house on an icy yard and, now, his belly distended with hot burgoo or lobscouse, why, such a man wants no silken bosom to caress, he aches only for the ineffable delight of his coarse pillow and no other orgasm than that of blessed unconsciousness.
The effect is much the same with compulsory games in the English public schools, which is why they are famous for their lack of sodomy.
“Now then, my lads!” cried Peter suddenly, “all hands to skylark! Who’ll be King Arthur?”
“King Arthur”, it seemed, was a game much relished by these simple tarry-breeks. The one named to be King was soused and drenched with laundry-water by his fellows until he could contrive to make one of his persecutors laugh, whereupon he who had laughed became King in turn, and was, in turn, soused. The first to be picked was a toothless old wag who entered merrily into the sport, capering about the deck in the drollest way as he evaded the buckets of water. Cornered against the hen-coops lashed to the rail, he reached in and plucked a rooster’s feather, which he stuck between the cheeks
of his bottom. He then strutted about, his neck jerking back and forth in the very manner of a cockerel, crowing shrilly until one of the lads was forced to guffaw and was duly made King. This new king, who was possessed of an inordinately long, thin member, performed so many antics with it that he soon “got his laugh” and gave place to another. So the sport went on. I believe I have said before that I shall never understand the English, they are a race apart, a race apart.
Wonderfully savoury smells were drifting from the galley and after a dangerous romp through the rigging – which seemed to delight them although they took the same risks for pay every day and night of their lives – they put on clothes and soon the duty-man of each mess reported to the cook with a great mess-kid. That day’s dinner was the Doctor’s famous Kentucky Burgoo, invented by a Colonel in Kentucky long ago, made of unimaginable things. I tried a tin platter of it and found it very good indeed. It became my favourite and I still treasure the recipe, which I shall write out at the end of this book if I live so long.
While the men ate their dinner we officers took tea with Blanche. We were but a small company for Lubbock scorned such “poodle-faking”, the Second had the watch and the Captain was “busy with his charts” – we could hear him snoring in the inner sleeping-cabin. Peter left the room for a moment to fetch a book of verses which Blanche pretended to want.
“Blanche,” I said.
“You are to call me ‘Mrs Knatchbull’.”
“Blanche, you were watching the sailormen romping naked a little while ago, were you not?”
“How dare you?” she whispered furiously.
I merely smiled.
“How do you know?” she asked.
I continued to smile.
“Well,” she murmured, “if you had been me and they were girls, would you not have watched?”
I nodded vehemently.
“Well, then. But I asked you how you knew.”
All the Tea in China Page 13
