Captain Balaam of the 'Cormorant', and other sea comedies

by Morley Roberts

JACK-ALL-ALONE

As it happened, I was the only passenger in the steamship Hindoo, and I found little entertainment in the company of her officers. The skipper was said never to open his mouth except upon Sundays, when he preached furiously to the assembled crowd and promised them hell as a reward for their labours on the deep sea. He was a religious maniac, much in favour with the owners because he combined religion with honesty and an unequalled degree of meanness about stores. He was little, and of a pallor that no sun could touch. He carried a hymn-book in his breast-pocket, and loose snuff in a side one. I found no comfort in him, and even less in the two mates. They were much married men with large families, and were subdued by the fear of losing their billets. They hung together and abused the skipper, and took no interest in the sea or any of its works. They pined for inland farms, where they would have been pelicans in a dry desert. I turned to the crew, and by dint of giving them tobacco and occasional nips of liquor overcame their distrust and shyness. For even though I had once been a seaman, that time was so far away that I had lost all look of it. And even when they knew it, they took it for granted I had been an officer, which put me out of their range. It was only my loneliness and my low cunning with rare whisky that made me free of their company, and at last loosened their tongues. I often sat with them in the dog-watches and set them yarning when I could by yarning myself. But only one story that I heard remains in my memory. It remains, not so much by its strangeness as by the strange way it was told, and the difficulty I had in getting it told at all. It was one of the younger seamen that put me on the tracks of the man who had it to tell.

'Why don't you try old Silent for a yarn, sir?' he said one day, when I was on the fo'castlehead with him on the look-out; 'he that says nought could say a lot. He might open up with you. With us he's as close as a water-tight compartment. But they do say in this vessel that he came out of one ship the honly survivor.'

What can one do on board a lonely steamer where there is no one to talk to and nothing to read, and there are so many unoccupied hours in front of one? The days were grey, the sea was grey, and as flat as last year's news. I set out yarn-hunting, and went for old Silent as they called him. I went for him warily. To ask him a question would be to cheat oneself of any expectation. I ceased to attempt to talk with him. But having fallen into his mood, I added to the compliment by giving him more tobacco on the quiet than I gave any one else. I called him into my deck cabin, and gave him a drink of whisky without a word. He drank it without a word, wiped his lips, scraped a sort of bow, and withdrew.

He was a melancholy man, downcast, ragged-bearded, with a glazed, yellow skin on his face, and shining scales upon the backs of his hands. His teeth were black with tobacco-chewing. His ears had been pierced for earrings, though he wore none. His eyes were deep-set, black; his mouth was a mere slit, his ears large and outstanding, like a couple of stunsails. He was obviously strong even yet. But he assuredly bore the marks of certain disastrous hours upon him, and his nerves betrayed him at times. I saw his hand shake when he lifted the drink to his lips.

'You've been through something, my friend,' I said to myself. 'I wonder what it is. It's not only "D.T."'

Life to my mind is a series of fights, and one is mostly knocked out. I could see that old Silent had been knocked out. Well, so had I, many a time, and his gloomy face appealed to me as a man of like disasters to myself. I saw (ay, and see) so many who seem to have no kind of insight into things. They are mere children, and one pities them as one does young recruits going to war. I've known men to die without suspecting it. For the most part, men live without suspecting any of the dangers, traps, pitfalls, and disasters that surround them. There was an uneasy alertness at times in this old seaman's eye which suggested that he knew Death was close at hand. I watched him keenly enough, for I had a great curiosity about him. What was the story of this poor inhabitant of this strange globe? What had he in common with those who see through illusion, who can pierce the hollow earth and see the fires, who can foretell storms, who can scent immediate and irremediable death?

This was folly, no doubt. I was in a bad state of mind, and had disaster behind me, and the shadow of it before me. There have been hours in many a man's life when the thought that he could end it was his only comfort. Without being in that state, my frame of mind was not wholly enviable, and I wanted some kind of help that I could not find. What was it that sent me to old Silent, if not the intuition that he had known worse than I?

We talked at last, at midnight, for I had found the clue to his heart in some inscrutable way beyond my knowledge. Perhaps he saw something in me that invited confidence. Oddly enough, strangers have often enough opened their hearts to me, when I least expected it. There is some deep necessity of confession in men's hearts, and in speech they compel sympathy—or at least they can plead their own cause.

''Tis a black night, sir,' said the old man, whose real name was Gilby, ''tis a black enough night.'

He was on the look-out, and it was the first hour after midnight. I climbed up and stood beside him close against the windlass, which looked in the dark like a stiff, distorted corpse covered with merciful canvas. The heavens were low and there was not one star visible. Wind there was none, and the sea was a dulled plate of pale dark steel. What air blew on the fo'castlehead we made ourselves. The cargo derricks on their platforms held watch with us: they looked diabolical and all alert. Under the straight stem of the Hindoo the sea hissed lightly like water escaping from a cock. The vibration of the engines was muffled for'ard; but it beat like a steady pulse.

'Ay, it's a very dark night,' I answered, as I stood alongside him in the very eyes of her.

I glanced up at the mast-head light, and what glow came to me blinded me still more. But the light was a kind of comfort. And so were the side lights. One could believe with the Chinese that a vessel might see with painted eyes on the bow. Neither of us spoke a word for full ten minutes.

'You've been a seaman, sir?' he asked presently.

'Twenty years ago.'

I went back twenty years, and was no more than a boy. Now was my 'Twenty Years After.' My old companions were dead or lost in the years.

'Twenty years you say, sir?'

There was something strange in his voice, an eagerness, a sharp pain.

'Full twenty,' I answered, dreaming.

'When I was young it seemed as if a man would forget anything in twenty years, sir.'

There were things one couldn't forget. I knew that, and I knew that here was an unforgetful heart of pain. My curiosity seemed most unworthy, and I was ashamed of it. But the old man spoke, and I knew he was not old.

'It's yesterday, sir,' he said in a low voice, 'and this very night in November—twenty years ago! A dark night enough, and yet a strange light in it. Did you ever play Jack-all-alone at sea, sir? was you ever by yourself at sea? That's the terror of the sea, sir. A sticky, wet, clammy terror. For we've mates in ships, even if we don't speak. Have you ever felt the big sea and the sky, sir, spread out and spread over for you alone?'

I had spent one night at sea alone in the English Channel in the fine but foolhardy game of single-handed sailing. He brought it back to me now, and I sat in a little fifteen-foot cutter-rigged open boat in a great and gorgeous calm to the south and east of Dungeness Point. At sunset the wind failed, and left me at the will of the tides. For a long hour the golden west was a wonder of fine colour, and the sky overhead a most heavenly pale blue. The low coast towards Romney was a faint dark line, submerged in the sea. Elms ashore looked like massed shipping; a church-tower was dark against the sunset. Dungeness light glared over me, and I drifted on the last of the north-west curve of the tide into its red sector shining like blood on the lip of the moving water. An infinite and most infinitely deep silence oppressed and purified me. This was the purification of the ancient and immortal tragedy of the sea. I sat in a red flood and the day died. The piety of the great darkness buried the earth. Till midnight came I was alone and was nothing; a mere fleck of foam; I was all things; I was the world itself. Then a great fishing-smack drifted to me. I spoke to a dim shadow in the heavy shadow of great sails that hung motionless. I lost that voice again in the drifting of the tide and in a faint light air. Then at last the dawn broke, and the winking lights of land died down and the day and the land arose, and I was no longer alone.

'I knew it for a night,' I said. It is the rarest thing for any seaman to know. In this was his disastrous story. 'How did it happen to you? Would it hurt you to tell me, or would it help?'

There was no more unworthy curiosity in me, and that I was purified of it he must have felt. For this was a man who could feel and remember. God's great gift of forgetfulness is mostly given to the highest and to the lowest only. I drifted for a moment on my own sea of memory, and when I came back I heard him speaking. Those who have been long silent come some day to an hour of strange and easy speech.

'I and my brothers——'

I heard his voice catch on the word and get over it with a bitter jar, as a vessel might slide over a shoal in uncharted waters. Yet he knew those waters of Marah well.

'We was in a rotten old steamer, sir, them and me. Jack was my elder, and a fine big chap, good as gold, and as brave and strong as a lion; a real seaman, such as one don't meet nowadays. He mostly sailed in windjammers, but he was one of those that like to see things, and he had a fancy to potter round the Mediterranean once in a way. He'd read a lot at sea one passage in a Green's ship that had a fair pile of books in her for the crowd for'ard, and he'd a fancy to see Italy and Greece. He'd talk by the hour of old Romans, and a strange character that was at Syracuse some time back; I disremember his name, but he was for science and arithmetic; and he knew the name of a score of Roman emperors quite pat; and he said once when we was at the port of Athens that a hill plain to be seen was the home of the gods in the days before Christianity came to the fore. He was a first-class man at whatever he took to, that he was, and might have been high up if he'd had a chance to be properly eddicated. And Billy, my young brother, was a fine boy of quite another guess sort. He cared for nothing but fun, and he was good-looking, and a rare youngster with his dooks. I've seen him down a Dutchman twice his weight, and do it laughing. He was bright as the day, sir, bright as sunlight, and there we was, the three of us, in this rotten old tramp, built in the year one of steamships, and much the shape and size of a biscuit-tin, and not much to her that was better material. And so we mucked about the Mediterranean looking for cargo, like the sea-tramps we was, and every time it blew a capful of wind we had to turn her nose to it and keep bobbing. For if there was any kind of a sea on the beam, she'd roll so cruel that our hearts was in our mouths. And Billy's joke was always the old sea-joke that she had rolled right over in the night, and done it so quick that no one knew it. But, I own, she put the fear of God into most of us, and some of us got that narvous, we couldn't sit quiet unless there was a flat calm, and her just joggin' on ahead like an old hay-wagon. We went down from Barcelona with some sort of truck to Constant, and there Jack did talk a lot about emperors, and he was pleased as Punch to see things, saying that history grew rank thereabouts; and he would ask the old skipper about things dead and gone thousands of years, so that the old man, never liking to own he wasn't chock-a-block with knowledge, used to fidget like one o'clock, and get that cross with dodging 'twas a game to hear him. And then we went humping up the Black Sea, and brought out wheat from Ibrail, and we got stuck down at Sulina, and lightered her clear and had a holy time, so that Jack said making history in the wheat trade was no joke. And we came out from Constant for home. But home we never got, sir, and to say the truth, I've never been home since, and never shall go. Do you know the Mediterranean, sir?'

Did I know it? Even as he talked I had been thinking of Crete on our starboard beam at night, and of Etna right ahead at dawn, and the white cities of the Straits, of lava-bound Catania, of old historic Syracuse, of the sickle-shaped harbour of Messina, of high Taormina, and the day breaking in the hollows of the grey Calabrian hills. Then smoking Stromboli, a cinder peak of the seas. And afterwards singing, roaring Naples and atmospheric Capri sunk in sweet blue air. Oh, did I know it?

'Ay, I know it.'

'We came up with Sicily, and went in by the Straits to drop some truck or another at Messina, and then out again to the north, and when we were near alongside Volcano, it was looking bad and grey and hard as it does when a levanter threatens. The sea got up, and it was short and steep and hard, sir. And for a while we battered among the islands and Volcano smoking and, I dessay, Stromboli too, but the smother of the weather was too thick to see it. And I was on the lookout, as I am now, and Jack he was relieved at the wheel as I came up on the fo'c'slehead. He laughed up at me, and said, "This top-heavy old hay-wagon will be doin' a roll directly." And just as he went below, the skipper, who was as afraid of her as he had a right to be, turned her about and put her nose into the wind. There she stayed, uneasy and sawin' with her 'ead like a swell carriage-'orse. And they just went ahead with the old scrap-engines, and stayed so, reckoning to ride the gale out. And she rode it right enough till night, and we three brothers 'ad supper and passed our jokes. And poor Billy was as bright a kid as ever—oh, I can think of things 'e said now.'

He stopped speaking for a moment and dashed his fist on the rail.

'By God, it's twenty years ago, sir,' he said choking. 'And old Volcano's smoking yet, like a giant's pipe in the dark, puff and glow, puff and glow. And that man-drowning tank we was in lies a thousand fathoms deep to the west of Volcano.'

He didn't speak for a while, and when he did his voice was calmer.

'Don't think, sir, that I'd ha' complained of the common fortunes of the sea. Men are drowned, they go overboard, silent it may be, or they drop from aloft howling awful, and in the smother of a wreck when the sea's a wild beast, it's the lot of men to go. I've seen fire at sea, sir, and death in many shapes, sudden and slow, killing and fever. But the way my brothers died—why, sir, I held their hands and couldn't save 'em, held their hands and could see their faces. Jack-all-alone, seamen say! I was Jack-all-alone, while they cried out to me!

'You can reckon, sir, that such a craft, such a rotten, shaky, scrap-heap hooker, such a thing that oughtn't to have been outside a river, wasn't over well found. And those that had the finding of 'er 'ad to make a bit of stealage. 'Alf the skippers and engineers of such takes their lives in their 'ands not for the pay, but for the bit of a make. And yet I'd not think it possible for the engineer to 'ave bin in the oil racket that came out that night. They was short of oil in Constant, and got some aboard from a rotten Levantine Greek with a Harmenian for partner, and it was bad oil enough, to be sure. But the worst was that some o' the drums was a quarter oil and the rest water. And I, being on deck after supper, caught on to what the chief engineer said to our skipper. He came up running, and went on the bridge.

'"Cap'en, most o' that oil was water, and the oil's that bad the bearin's are overwarm. Can't I stop 'er?"

'"Stop 'er!" says the old man. I knew that voice; 'e was that narvous of his old tank. "Why, man, if we stop 'er, she'll roll over!"

'The seas was 'eavy, my word, considering where we was. She plunged and shook and creaked like a kicked tin can.

'"I'm edgin' of 'er in under Volcano," says the skipper. "I want more steam, not less."

'"By God, you can't 'ave it," said the engineer, as desperate as you like.

'"Play the 'ose on your blasted bearin's," pipes the skipper, with a voice like a bosun's whistle.

'"I'm playin' it," says the other.

'"Then you know what to do," squeaks the old man.

'And the engineer comes down tearin' 'is very beard. And I was took with a kind of a shiver, which was curious seeing that mostly sailormen never gives a damn what 'appens till the worst opens its mouth for 'em. I went down into the fo'c'sle and looked at Jack fast asleep, and Billy under 'im. There was only four of us for'ard, and they two was the starboard watch. That was the last time I saw more of 'em than their 'ands. I went on deck again, never wakin' 'em. And then I 'eard the engineer on deck again.

'"I'll 'ave to stop my engines," he cried, "or if I don't they'll stop theirselves. There's three bearin's sizzling, and the white metal's running, and the engine-room's full o' steam from the 'ose playin' on 'em."

'"You can't stop," said the skipper. And the wind blew like a blast out of a pipe; it squealed, and she stopped a'most dead.

'"Give us a quarter of an hour," says the old man, and he puts the second mate alongside of him. "Call the 'ands, and rig up a sea-anchor."

'And that was too late, for there was a crack below, and a man screamed, and the engineer bolted for his hole. But the engines stopped right there, and the nose of 'er paid off, and she lay in the trough of the sea, and rolled once, and rolled twice. And she went over to windward till you'd 'ear everything crack, and then she rolled to loo'ard. Would she ever stop! I see the old man slide away down the bridge, squealin', and the second mate pitched off his feet, and I gave a yell and climbed up on the weather rail, and old Volcano glared red over us to the nor'ard. And she was crank, and was never meant for the sea, and she 'ad 'eavy useless spars and derricks that overweighted 'er, and her grain was in bulk, and not too much of it. And the wind got hold of her, and she never stopped. I 'eard the old man yell again, and the sea rose up against him, and the sleeping mate was screamin' in his berth with a jammed door. And then I was Jack-all-alone, scramblin' with bleedin' fingers up a rotten wet iron slope, and I stopped when I 'ad 'old of 'er very keel. And then I 'eard an awful rip and a tearing, and a boom under my feet, and I reckoned the 'ole of 'er engines dropped through her deck, and may be the boilers exploded, for she gave a 'eave on the sea that made me sick, and I 'ung on with my nails, and I found myself cryin' out "Billy" and "Jack," and I was mad that hour. Ay, I was mad, and I beat upon the black and weedy iron of the plates underneath me. I was warm to think I was saved, and I was a coward, and I shook and trembled and nigh slipped off as the old scow wallowed. 'Twas most 'orrible to be 'earin' warm and livin' men speakin' one moment, to be among 'em, and them talkin', and to see the warm light, and to 'ear the thump, thump, of the engines, and the crackin' and creakin' of the old Red Star, and then to be all alone, Jack-all-alone, sailing 'and in 'and with death, 'ove up not on an 'alf tide rock as the thing beneath me looked, but a rotten old steamer turned turtle, and like to slip away from me any moment. And as I 'owled to myself, and saw the white water run up and lip at me like open-mouthed sharks, I saw the red light of Volcano away high up, and the light was like the wink of a light'ouse blinded in a fog. And the sight of the land, or where the land was, maddened me, and I cried like a child with weakness. 'Twas most 'orrible, sir, and weakness took me so, that I slipped and nigh lost 'old of the keel. But I climbed up again desperate, and findin' a bolt worked out, I 'itched my belt to it and 'ung on.

'And then I 'eard a sound that made my 'eart stop beatin'. 'Twas as if some one was usin' an 'ammer on iron, and I knew that there was some one alive inside of the Red Star, cooped up under 'er keel and shut into a tomb. And I cried, "You can't get out, you can't get out, mates!" so that my voice made me afraid. For 'twas a scream and like no voice I'd ever 'eard. But I scrambled along the keel and came to where the 'ammerin' was, and then I knew that they was Jack or Billy, or maybe both, and I beat with my fists on the plates, and I bled, but didn't know it, and I prayed all the plates was as rotten as we believed. But they wasn't that bad, and they was iron and iron bolted, and I'd nought but a knife, and what they was workin' with inside I couldn't tell. And they was in foul 'eavy air, and in the blackest dark. I prayed and I cursed, and I beat again, and some one 'eard, for they knocked three times regular and three times again, and to answer I beat with the 'eft of my knife. And then they worked awful, and there was bitter times when they rested, and in all the cold of the Levanter and the wetness of the flyin' spray I sweated like a bull, and then I was as cold as ice. And in an 'our or more, there was some sign that what they did was tellin' on the plate they worked on. For all of a sudden I 'eard a strange sound like the 'issing of steam blowin' off. 'Twas the compressed air inside that kept the wreck afloat comin' sharp out of a bit of a crack. And I knew that every second she'd sink more and more, and I seemed to see that unless the plate came off quick, they only die the quicker for tryin' to escape. And I called to 'em, but they 'eard nothin', only knowin' that a man was above 'em. And I got my knife under the plate and the blade broke. I worked sobbin', and all the time I was talkin'. 'Twas madness, plain and to be 'eard, and then I felt a smash into the iron, and the end of a splice bar came through it, and the air screamed up under me, and I knocked again three times, and they knocked three times, and I screamed out, "Billy! Jack!" and the poor chaps 'eard me. Jack's voice came to me like a voice out o' the grave, thin and eager, and all of a scream—

'"Tom—Tom!"

'That was me! Oh, the sea at my cold feet, and the sound of the wind and the red pulsin' of Volcano, and the round 'ump of the Red Star 'ove out o' the sea like the bulk of a dead whale, and under me my brothers. There's brothers don't love each other!

'I screamed—

'"Work—work!"

'And the sea crawled up to me, or so it seemed, and the thick air spurted up at me that was their life. And they broke out a bit more, and 'twas an 'ole a man's 'and could come through. And they stopped, so that I cried again to 'em. I 'eard Jack plain.

'"I'm about done, lad!"

'"Where's Billy?"

'I beat on cold and jagged iron.

'"He's here," said Jack, "but the air's too bad for him."

'I bade him give me the bar, and I worked outside like a mad one. But they'd struck the only rotten spot, and I couldn't get edge or claws of the bar under the plate. "The water's risin'," said Jack. He put 'is poor 'and out, and I took it. Sir, I didn't think there was a God then! And the sea lipped at me, and the Red Star wallowed, and there was red on the edge of the lipping waves from a big glare of Volcano.

'"I've no purchase to get an 'old out 'ere," I said. And still the 'ot thick air came up, foul as could be. And Jack took the bar and dropped it. There's a strange weakness comes over one breathin' such air. I 'eard 'is voice again—

'"The bar's deep in water, I can't feel it."

'Then 'e lifted Billy, and Billy put 'is 'and out.

"She's sinkin', Tom," said Billy. 'E spoke like a chap in a dream, and the water was to my feet as I sat across the keel. And I felt the boy's strength give, and I 'eld 'is 'and tight. But neither him nor Jack spoke again, and the boy struggled dreadful. And presently 'er bows was deeper than 'er stern, and I felt water inside of 'er, and I knew they was dead. And I 'ad an 'old of the boy's 'and, and me cryin' and shriekin' out I don't know what. Then 'e slipped away, and I was all awash, and I floated off and took 'old of a big bit of gratin', and the old Red Star 'eaved up 'er stern a bit and then went down. And I lay till dawn on the gratin', no sensible man, but crazy, and old Volcano winked at me like a red flare in a fog. And I dreamed of sailin' in a ship with Jack captain as 'e meant to be some day, being given to larnin', and at daybreak a fishin' craft took me into Messina.'

I walked the deck of the fo'c'slehead with him for many long silent minutes. Then some one struck two bells aft, and he struck it on the big bell at the break of the fo'c'slehead. Then he walked for'ard alone. He called to me after a minute.

'Do you see a light on the port bow, sir?' he asked me.

'I see it, Gilby.'

'That's Volcano, sir.'

He reported it to the officer on the bridge.