CHAPTER XV
“It was a’ for our richtfu’ King
We left fair Scotland’s strand,
It was a’ for our richtfu’ King,
We first saw Irish land, my dear,
We first saw Irish land.
“Then right he turned and round about
Upon the Irish shore
He gave his bridle rein a shake
With ‘Adieu for ever more, my dear,’
With ‘Adieu for ever more.’”
No one knows who wrote these words—some mournful Jacobite, perhaps, who felt as the author does; for though the night is perfect, with the golden harvest moon reflected in a sea like glass, we cannot but feel a little sentimental on turning our backs on relatives and on our dear West Highland strand (especially during the shooting season).
The tune fits the words, does it not? I think it is a recollection of an old sea-chantey I once heard—coming back to mind to suit the words, and what might seem to be the mournful cadence of our Diesel engine and the sighing of the glassy water as we surge gently across the swell. I wrote before of the musical notes of our engine. I do not think my cousin Urmston or Henriksen notice it much to-night, for they are too absorbed in whale talk. My cousin left desk, and shoots, and engagements, to come with us to the Irish shore to see us as far as Belfast, and to go over our business papers, but pipes and whale talk and more pipes and more whale talk, and minute examination of the engines, seem more to their taste at the moment than business papers by lamplight. Belfast docks will be more the place for business than the Sound of Islay, with Jura and the day fading and a night full of the yellow light of the harvest moon. A joyous change for the family lawyer, is it not—from the city to the coast he dreams of in town—from the busy office to the quiet of the Highlands and islands—from affairs of companies to the picking up of the lights on Islay and the Mull of Cantire? We hoped for his sake to see a killer at least, or something to fire one of the guns at—several finners have been seen lately on the Scottish coast. But as the morning dawned it grew rough with thick haze, and it was all we could do to pick up Black Ness and then the entrance to Belfast Lough. We are not proud, so we took a pilot and felt our minds at rest as we steered up the three miles of buoys which mark the channel almost as close as lamp-posts in a street.
If you have not seen Belfast I give you my word that the first impression is astonishing. You can hardly believe you are not dreaming. The iron network of building leviathans in course of construction is overpowering, enormous, so vast is the perspective of not merely one or two great iron ghosts, but streets of them, high as buildings in New York, one beyond the other on either side of the river, fading into smoke and distance, and the noise of iron hammering and banging is universal, so all-pervading that you hear yourself speak quite easily. We felt like a mere speck crawling up the grey river. By-and-by we noticed little mites moving about in these gigantic structures of iron filigree-work, high up on stagings, or higher still on vast cranes, up in the sky; these were men, twenty-six thousand of them in one yard alone! We met them later, in marching order, hefty fellows, blue-eyed, drilled Ulster Irishmen, stronger looking than Scotsmen. Later on we saw them sign their National Covenant.
These are descendants of the people who gave Scotland its name. Few there are who know this. Men learn about the Kings of England and of Israel, with their dates, at public schools, but never a word are they taught of the far longer, far more dramatic and interesting succession of Scottish kings, previous to their succession to the English crown. Not one in a hundred knows that the old name for Ireland was “Scotia,” that it was not till the seventh century that the Scots of Ireland gave their name to Alba, to the United Scots and Picts of Britain north of Tweed, our Scotland of to-day. But we are verging toward dangerous ground—let us get to sea again and continue to chronicle on the rolling deep, and let Erin go bragh.
Erin goes fast away on our right—a violet line between white-capped greenish waves and a grey, windy sky. We came down Belfast Lough against dead head-wind and proudly passed much larger sailing craft than ourselves waiting in shelter for fair wind, and having hunted for a boat in which to deposit our pilot! We got out to sea, set sail, and have again become a sailing-ship with a strong breeze on our quarter. We knocked off eleven knots an hour, leaving tramps and such-like behind us. But what an awful appearance we have! Four days alongside the quays in Belfast, with coal-dust flying everywhere, have made us like a collier, rather hard lines, considering we make no mess coaling ourselves as others do. What a change there will be in the amenity of seaports and all towns when oil takes the place of coals. Imagine a clean town—Edinburgh, for example, and the beauty of such a dream!
It was the air pump and the connections between our oil tanks that brought us into the thick of great events—into “Ulster Day” and the signing of the National Covenant, and a small matter (hunting for some flexible iron tubing) brought us into the great and beautiful City Hall. I am sure few people have heard what an exquisitely designed building this is—indeed, what a very handsome town Belfast is, taking it all round. And the people! how I wish my northern countrymen knew what they were like in the mass. How very like themselves, both men and women, but perhaps rather bigger and stronger than the average Scot, and as reliable-looking, and yet perhaps a little happier than we are, even in their anxious times.
I don’t think our Norse crew found Belfast altogether a bed of roses. Some had shore leave, with five shillings each to spend up town. Our cook, or steward, told me of their adventures. He heard of them from the watchman, who was made their confidant. Now they are ship’s property. Seven of them, all young fellows, “very greenhorns,” said the cook, washed, put on celluloid collars, brushed up, and sallied forth at night, and they had barely got to the bridge along Queen’s Quay when three of them had given their five shillings to maids of Erin, fair, frail things in shawls, and the coy creatures fled and the three came home to the ship lamenting—so the watchman said. The others, to a certain extent, enjoyed all the tumasha, and, to be sociable, bought a penny Union Jack buttonhole, badges that almost everyone was wearing; what they signified they don’t quite know yet. It was jolly lucky they weren’t killed. They went up Bally Macarack Street, in the heart of the Roman Catholic district, and were mobbed by Nationalists, fifteen girls and a dozen men. Happily the police arrived in time. The tallest of our crew got a severe kick on the part he sits on, and the smallest got a “shock,” as he said, on his eye, and they say: “If we lies here in Belfast one years we no go shore again! No fears; dem’s folk’s mad, dem’s crazy! What’s all that for-dumna ‘Ulster’ dems shouts all de time?”
We are picking out our course to-night (Monday) on the chart rather comfortably in the cabin. It is smooth and we are in mid-Channel, in the north-west we have Holyhead Light. We forecast a run of luck for ourselves. We’ve had our share of head-winds and little difficulties since we left the south of Norway, so with the compasses we mark out six days’ run as long as to-day’s run, which will bring us to Azores in six days, or seven days sure, if we have a little strong fair wind—we won’t think of nasty rough weather.
But “Just about here,” the compasses pause, “I was three weeks,” said Henriksen. “That Christmas was the roughest time of my life,” he continued, puffing at his new calabash.
“We was on the Kron Prince three weeks out from Cardiff, seven feet water in the hold and the pumps won’t work.” They had reached the Azores and drifted back to the Bay, then to the Irish Channel, and got shelter, I think, in Bridgewater.
“Captain and mate they’s on deck, with revolvers, but we get ashore and run away. We was not going in that for-dumna sink ship, I’se sure. No! tree hours at wheel was my last watch, one hour pumping, cold, wet, then I finds in corner of fo’c’sle three biscuits, one half-cup tea cold, dat decides me!” “How did you get off?” I said.
“With a runner—runner come alongside: we cuts square hole under fo’c’sle head, captain and mate, they looks all round deck, but not below bows, and we slips out, eight of us and our bags.”
Perhaps these eight were justified for the Crown Prince got a new crew and sailed, and was never heard of again.
Henriksen had three guineas sewn in the waistband of his trousers, and a lot of sense besides for eighteen, also his mate’s certificate, although he was only a sailor on board, and he reflected, as he went ashore, on what he knew of runners and their ways: how the sailor is kept by the same on the credit of his next two or three months’ advance wage, and then goes to sea with precious few clothes and say five shillings to land with at the next port, and has therefore to go to another runner until he gets another ship, and so may be at sea two or three years with hardly the sight of pay. So on getting ashore Henriksen made a clean bolt to the nearest railway station, jumped into first train, taking ticket to first station, leaving his bag with the runner, of course, but keeping his mate’s ticket. Where did he say he got to? I forget, somewhere near Liverpool, but five or ten miles he did free of charge as the guard was interested in his recital.
From Liverpool he booked third class to Belfast. It was a wild crossing and he met, strangely enough, another runaway, an Englishman, and isn’t this the making of a story? They befriended a would-be second-class passenger and his wife, who were obliged, by overcrowding, to go steerage, and both these people were helplessly sea-sick, and their poor children just rolled about the floor till the two young seamen took care of them, and held them in their arms all night. The father pressed a whole £1 note on Henriksen, which he refused, as he had plenty of his £3 remaining, but the Englishman was stony, and he was persuaded to take ten shillings, and the parents gave each of them their address.
Afterwards Henriksen called on them—and such a fine house it was! Henriksen reflects now he might have called on these old friends in Belfast this journey. “They must be old people now. Next time I come to Belfast,” he says, “I calls—maybe they’s in life.”
At Belfast he went on a local tramp, then got berth as second mate, and had twelve months at sea without a day ashore. For it was to Bahia that he went, where you anchor almost out of sight of land. For I forget how many weeks he lay at anchor, then sailed to another port, twelve men in the fo’c’sle, seven with monkeys, the rest with parrots, fancy the racket! then to Mobile Bay and then back to Troon, “two houses and a wall,” as he describes our charming little Scottish seaport, then home to Norway. That is all you sometimes see of foreign parts if you go down to the sea in ships. Nine months at sea with one night ashore is the writer’s longest spell of salt water, but Henriksen tells me he knows of a man being twenty-seven months at sea without getting on shore. I think I must make a special book of Henriksen’s adventures. As told to me they are interesting, but our surroundings count for a good deal: over a chart in the little lamplit cabin or on our quarter-deck (three steps and overboard), the moon overhead, and our sails looking dark and large, and our Æolian engine singing its steadfast song.
Though only a little south of Ireland, we have the real swell of deep sea; rolling low hills that leave no level horizon to us, for we are so close to the sea-surface, long, gentle undulations that suggest a perfect golf-course for elderly people.
We have a steady air from the north-east like the Trades. Possibly we may never have to shift a sail till we reach the Azores, and certainly to-day there was that in the light at midday, the sharp shadows on faces as we took the sun’s altitude, that, even with a pigeon-grey sky, reminded me of southern light that I have not seen or felt for several years, and we did things with our coats off, and brought our rifles on deck for an overhaul.
Our Norwegian heavy bores for sea-elephants cost £3, and as far as I can see are extremely accurate at the short range. I have tried them at one hundred and one hundred and thirty yards and they do not burst. It will be interesting to compare the effect of my higher velocity sporting mauser, a 375, with their work. Possibly the larger bullet of the Norse rifle, about 500, may be more useful for this huge animal at close range. The Norsemen are sure of this, but I back the bullet with the higher velocity every time.
There is a gale this evening and we are running with reefed foresail.