“I did not know, but I know you, Blanche.” She blushed, furious again, or pretending to be so.
“Oh no you do not, Sir! Nor shall you, if that is what you think!”
“Yes I do – and shall,” I said laconically. She marched up so close to me that her breasts nearly touched my shirt; glared at me for a moment, then kicked me very hard just above the ankle. I smiled.
“What is the name of the coarse seaman with the long, absurd, ah, thing?” she asked.
“I do not know. Let us ask Lord Stevenage when he returns.”
“I hate you.”
Dinner for us officers, later that day, was sea pie. It is quite delicious. The proper sort, such as we had, was known as a “three-decker” because it was made of layers of salt junk (pork or beef), vegetables and fish, each separated by its own pie-crust. Thus one could deal with it seriatim as a primitive meal of three courses or, if one was a connoisseur and the pie made by a reliable cook, one could cut through all the strata and have all three things delightfully mingled upon one’s plate and palate. Each of the crusts, too, had its own peculiar flavour; the pungency of that which separated the fish from the meat was particularly prized although it tasted a little rank on first acquaintance.
(“Junk”, I should explain, really meant old ropes and such stuff so hardened with salt and tar that it was cut into lengths and sold – or saved – for picking into oakum, with which ships’ seams were caulked. Ships would often carry a quantity of it in the lazaretto to give occupation for prisoners and idle hands generally. This is why “marine-stores”, which dealt in such redundant things, came to be called “junk-shops” – and why “junk-shop” has come to be a contemptuous term for an establishment purveying fine antique porcelains. Salt pork, towards the end of its long life in the barrel, develops a curious appearance and texture which irresistibly reminds one of this pensioned-off cable: hence the opprobrious but affectionate name “salt junk”. “Irish Horse” and “King’s Own” were other names which do not need explanation, I think.)
After the sea-pie we were brought duff, for it was Sunday. The men, too, had been given duff – “dog in a blanket” they called it or, if without currants, “dog’s vomit” – and although it was but a dark heavy mess of flour and beef-fat boiled in the tail of a shirt they prized it greatly, for it was their Sabbath privilege. Indeed, when anointed with a syrup made of hot water and molasses it served very well to fill up the chinks of a healthy belly, especially after taking vigorous exercise.
That night, after reading a few pages of print, Peter and I agreed to take our bedding out onto the deck, for the night was warm and seductive. We settled by the taffrail, exactly at the end of the “lubber-line” or fore-and-aft axis of the ship, for there the rolling motion is least and so digestion least disturbed. I lay on my back, wondering at the sky.
It is hard to explain how different the sky is in the Tropics at night: it is never black but a kind of rich, velvet blue, like the ground-colour of a fine Ming jar, and the stars are not cold and remote but hot, fat and within reach of an outflung hand. Until you have seen it you cannot begin to understand. The tropic sea chuckled knowingly under the ship’s counter below us and, below us too, the rudder sometimes squeaked and grunted in its pintles as the quartermaster corrected his course. With a twist of the body and a straining of the neck I could see our wake streaming out behind and flashing with phosphorus, blue and green and silver fire. I was reminded of the sequined front of the gown of a plump lady singer I had once admired in Gatti’s Music Hall in Villiers Street, by Charing Cross: it moved me almost to tears.
Since these pages are intended for the eyes of grandchildren of varying degrees of innocence and – now that the St Elmo’s Fire of authorship is, I must confess, commencing to sear my breast – it seems to me that I must eschew describing the less genteel adventures which befell me from Finisterre to Gran Canaria, lest this relation might raise a blush upon the cheek of childish purity or, worse, cause a bookseller to feel that my work was not likely to be acceptable to Mr Mudie’s Circulating Library. Suffice it to say, then, that I learned a great deal during the passage but was not able to have my will of Mrs Knatchbull, who still stoutly resisted my attempts to call her “Blanche”.
Indeed, this would have been exquisitely dangerous – having my will of her, I mean – because the ship was small, as I have said, and her husband stalked incessantly about in the course of his duties and, at the most unpredictable times, would make it clear to her that she was to be ready for his husbanding in four and one half minutes. I thought I might never learn what had to be done in this four-and-one-half minute interim but you may be sure that my imagination ran riot. Yours, too, I suspect, would also have run the same riot, for she was most desirable and, by the time I am speaking of, would make a charming grimace at me when he gave her these orders in my presence. Sometimes she would raise her eyebrows a little while looking at me enigmatically. It was quite enervating.
Peter used to look at me strangely in those days, as though marvelling at my ill temper. Fortunately, there was the ever-present spiritual consolation of the Doctor’s food: who can dwell upon the evanescent delights of the female body (“sacca stercoris, sacca vermorum”) when every few hours comes fresh and fresh some new delight to gladden the belly and fortify the animal tissues? I defy anyone to lie brooding over the bosom of his Captain’s wife when his own bosom is crammed with a breast of young lamb, boned and rolled and stuffed with forcemeat and rosemary.
So we sped southward; each one of us, I am sure, wrapt in his own preoccupation. I remember Las Palmas, the port of Gran Canaria, only because there I caught from a young person a tiresome little infestation which is of no interest and also because I bought a canary-bird which sang so indefatigably that I felt obliged, on my way back to the ship, to cool its ardour in sea-water. I did not mean it to die; I have felt unhappy about it ever since. It must have been frail, frail.
At some time soon after the Gran Canaria – I am not certain when, for I was preoccupied with certain formidable headaches I had acquired there, as well as the slight infestation (which the excellent mercury soap which Peter had urged me to buy proved sovereign for) – at some time after quitting this island, I say, we fell in with the Trade Winds, which enabled our Captain to set every scrap of sail and run south and a little east at a rate which pleased everyone on board who knew about these matters.
Porpoises, dolphins and other engaging monsters of the deep played about the ship, as though welcoming us to these latitudes, and flying-fish continually threw themselves upon the deck as willing sacrifices to the Doctor’s skillet. (They are also very good baked.)
The men were happy for, with three strong watches, there was little work: an occasional trimming of the sails and snubbing of the bowlines and, apart from that, a little painting and, of course, the continual burnishing of the bright brass-work.
The officers were happy because the men were happy and there was no wary eye to be kept upon them.
The Captain was happy because we were making wonderfully fast days’ runs southward, which seemed to be what his God wanted of him.
I was happy, in a way, because as the weather grew warmer Blanche chose to don ever more diaphanous and revealing garments although, in another way, I was miserable, for I had long been used to the solaces which the other sex affords and there was no opportunity to work my will upon Blanche – although there was no doubt in my mind that I would, sooner or later, do so. Indeed, each day my imaginative fervour became more inflamed and each night I imagined an even more vigorous consummation between us when the time should be ripe.
I read a great deal in Jane Austen and some of Peter’s heathen authors; I found one of the latter much to my taste, a poet, Catullus, who wrote a Latin that I could construe without great difficulty. One of his lines, so apt to my feelings towards Blanche, sticks in my mind to this day:
“Odi et amo. Excrucior.” – “I hate her; I love her. It hurts.”
The days, as I have said, passed pleasantly enough and indeed uneventfully except for one diverting moment when we were close to the southernmost point of the Bight of Benin and the lookout man hailed the deck with news of a ship crossing our stern at the distance of a mile. Captain Knatchbull, to my surprise, seized his spy-glass and swarmed up the ratlines like a marmoset. In a moment he was down again, shouting a string of orders. The ship went about, the White Ensign – which we had no right to fly – was run up, powder and shot were broken out and soon a ball from our long brass carronade went screaming across the bows of the long, fast-looking vessel which was now on our starboard quarter. The vessel paid no heed, except to shake out a reef or two of sail; our second ball fell short. Shaken and dazed by the noise and the suddenness of it, I asked Peter what on earth the Captain was about. He gave me a blank, expressionless gaze and I realised that the Captain was within earshot.
“What I am about, Mr Van Cleef,” he said grimly, “is putting the fear of the Lord of Hosts into a vile slaver. Snuff the air, Sir, pray snuff it!” I snuffed. Indeed, even from that distance a loathsome stench was on the breeze.
“Those slaves are fresh from the barracoons,” the Captain rasped on, “in a week they’ll be puddled in their own excrement, and you’d smell the craft from five miles.”
This range was short enough for me; I made polite excuses and strolled as fast as one can stroll to the nearest rail.
“Go to the loo, Mr Van Cleef!” shouted the Captain. I paused, turned, gritting my teeth hard against the bile rising in my stomach.
“The loo, Karli – the loo’ard rail: never spew into the wind!” cried Peter.
Because I was – am – nimble upon my feet I contrived to reach the leeward rail in time and presently understood the seamanlike logic of their advice. (Even now you clever grandchildren smirk – I have seen you – when I use this antiquated sailorman’s word “loo” for what you genteely call the “water-closet”: if you were ever to piddle over the windward side of a ship in the roaring forties I think you might find that old men are not altogether foolish.)
That was the first time I was ever sick on ship-board (except, naturally, after drinking unwholesome liquor in foreign ports) and there was only one other time afterward and that, too, was not caused by the motion of the ship.
When I had quite voided my excellent luncheon into the deep – no one laughed at me; some of the most seasoned of the watch on deck seemed to be almost as revolted as I was – the black, rakish slaver was already almost hull-down, making best speed on the notorious Middle Passage to the West Indies. Quite sixty percent of the slaves, I am assured, will have survived to find interesting and useful work in the Americas and, as I write, I am informed credibly that their descendants are now often taught to read and write and may well, one day, prove to be the equals of their former owners. This seems strange but by no means impossible to one who, like me, has seen strange things in every quarter of the globe. Respice finem, I say, and indeed, experto crede.
We charged on southwards and, although my duties were light, I became as bronzed and weatherbeaten as any shellbacked sailor, for I often went on deck and gazed at my crew-mates sprawled aloft upon the yards, setting or furling sails at heights which would have induced acute vertigo in me. The ship’s people seemed to grumble a great deal when made to scramble up the masts to make these adjustments to the sails – the main course weighed quite one English ton when wet and there were few of the topmen who could boast a full count of finger-nails – but the Second assured me that this grumbling habit of theirs was a natural bent, it made them happy in some curious British way. They were over-fed and under-worked, the First Mate assured me: he was sometimes at his wits’ end to think how to keep them occupied with a fair wind and fine weather. It is easier nowadays in iron ships: there is always rust to be chipped off and steel masts to be scoured with sand and sacking.
Why I refer, from time to time, to “the ship’s people” rather than to “the sailors” is because “sailor” has a precise meaning at sea: it means a before-the-mast man who is making at least his second long passage – on his first he was but a “landsman”. During this, or a later voyage, he might or might not be raised to the degree of “seaman”, of which there are two grades. If a man can perform every maritime task imaginable with skill and courage and conceal his crimes from his superiors he may well attain the excellence of being rated an “ordinary seaman”. If he can add to these arts the art of surviving all perils, such as storms, bucko mates, syphilis and “nose-paint” (which means cheap liquor), he may one day reach the distinction of being called “Able-Bodied”. Few achieve this peak and those who do can rarely claim to own an entire able body: they are old and often deficient in fingers, toes, eyes and so forth. The sea is a hard mistress.
So you see that our “ship’s people” comprised landsmen, sailors, seamen, idlers (viz., carpenters, sailmakers and the like), officers, their servants and, sometimes, a supercargo such as I then was.
I cultivated, when I could, the companionship of the horniest-handed of the seamen, for these were great treasure-chests of “yarns” (this word means lovingly-polished lies). They promised me that everything on land had its counterpart in the seas: there was sea-weed, of course, a sea-devil, sea-eagles, sea-girdles, sea-dogs (but not, they assured me, sea-bitches, although I knew better), sea-hogs, sea-lions, sea-jellies, sea-horses, and sea-holly, sea-mews and sea-otters, sea-snakes, sea-urchins and, needless to say, the dreaded sea-serpent itself. Every one of them had talked to a man who had seen the sea-serpent; not one claimed to have seen it himself. This disclaimer, universal amongst seafaring men, is an agreed ruse to disarm incredulity, of course.
In those long, sunny days, each one so like the other that one could not tell if one were in yesterday again or no, even an attack of flatulence brought on by the Doctor’s “shot-skilligolee” (dried-pease soup) was a memorable event. (For my part, I have no quarrel with flatulence: it is a harmless enough recreation, provides an admirable commentary to novels such as Northanger Abbey, gives no offence to oneself and little to bystanders – although Peter called me Montgolfier – and has been much praised by the American B. Franklin, who also invented tram-conductors.)
But the first great relief from the bewildering monotony of sea and sun and steady wind was when we put in for water at Delagoa Bay. It seemed that sweet water was plentiful there and cheap: later in our voyage we might well be paying £1 a ton for the stuff! Even in those days I preferred richer fluids but the men needed to drink great quantities of it. It is good, too, for shaving and washing.
Delagoa Bay is not an interesting port-of-call. I found little to see, nothing good to eat and drab girls who were yellow of complexion, also ugly and tired, tired. An enterprising youth sold me his sister for the night, vowing that she was but fourteen and a virgin. I cannot be sure that he lied about her age but her virginity was less than plausible: she accepted my courteous attentions with all the sweet, coy diffidence of a sow who has too often been taken in a wheelbarrow to the boar. I did not spend the whole night with her, although I had paid for it; she made me feel “like a piece of string in a bucket of warm water” (as the rough sailormen say) and I was anxious to get back to my bar of mercury soap.
As I made my way to my cabin I encountered Blanche: she was lightly clad and seemed to be coming from the direction of the First Mate’s quarters. She smiled enigmatically at me and was gone before I could select a suitable expression for my own face. I fancy I looked shifty, simply.
“Peter,” I asked gloomily as I rolled into my bunk, “is there also such a thing as a sea-cow?”
“Indeed there is; it is also known as the dugong and many legends of mermaids are based upon …”
“Thankyou,” I said. “I only wished for a plain ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Goodnight.”
I know what you care about.
Chapter Ten
Watered, provisioned with fresh fruit and disenchanted with the dreams of sweet femininity which some of us had been foolishly harbouring, we set sail again for the Cape of Good Hope where, everyone assured me, things would be better. They were mistaken. Cape Town – called the Tavern of the Seas – is full of dishonest people; many of them claim to be Dutch but their language is quite barbarous to a true Hollander, their religion is preposterous and their women are devout and fat – excepting the whores, who are smelly and fat. Many of these Boers, Afrikaaners as they call themselves, are Jews: the women of these, of course, are chaste and fat.
In this Town the best bargain for a lusty young man is a Griqua girl, you may depend upon it. They are astonishing, quite astonishing; it puzzles me where they can have learned such sophisticated arts of love in a community so devoted to Jehovah and fat old ladies.
Soon the rich and rare cargo of ostrich plumes and rhinoceros horns was flowing aboard and my days were much taken up with writing these things into manifests, consulting Bills of Lading and applying the blessed mercury soap whenever my duties permitted me a little leisure. To this day I never travel without a cake of such soap; it is as sovereign as Dr Collis Browne’s noted Chlorodyne, which is saving so many cholera-stricken soldiers in the Transvaal today.
There came a time when the last bale of cargo had been stowed away, the last official bribed and, for me, the last acceptable Griqua girl had revealed her most exhausting tour de force. We weighed anchor; none too soon for the crew’s health, I may say: British sailors are like animals when they see a foreign woman, animals.
All the Tea in China Page 14
