Along winding avenues that divide the towering wooden buildings rushed battalions of hurrying legs. The noise of car bells and gongs and the babble of shouting voices assailed my ears. All the races under the sun seemed to have emigrated to that spot to fight in scheming regiments for the almighty dollar. White men, Chinamen, black men, tawny men, yellow men, Armenians, Turks, Germans with thick necks—all were there. Over my head rushed express trains. No space seemed wasted. Indeed the Yankees in their commercial search for gold peg out claims in the sky, claim square miles of stars, as up go their buildings to the heavens. By the second-storey windows on elevated railway tracks crash along the trains. In those days they ran by steam, and the coal-dust showered down your neck and in your eyes as you moved along with the thick crowd below; a crowd so dense that you could shut your eyes, make no effort, and still be propelled along in the mighty rush, as you dreamed of other days of peace and solitude! I went across Brooklyn Bridge by night: swung on mighty steel cables, it dangles in space and has several divisions for vehicles and pedestrians. Below rushed the ferry-boats on the Hudson river, their port-holes ablaze with light, and the sound of music on deck fading as they passed underneath. Across the bridge hurried electric cars, racing along by the mechanical genius of man’s brain, the light of the Universe—the stars switched on to wheels!
I only stayed one week in New York, for I met an old shipmate whom I had sailed with from Sydney. He was on a tramp steamer. One of the deck-hands had gone into hospital, so I yielded to my friend’s persuasion, went on board, secured the job and signed on. For the rest, it is all like a dream now: I can hear the rattle of the rusty chain as they haul the anchor up, and the uncouth, shrill calls of the pulling crew rising above the clamour of the steam winches, just before the tramp steamer moves away from the wharf to put to sea. New York and its babble of voices with their nasal twang, its vast drama of scheming existence in a feverish hurry, fades away and becomes a memory of some monstrous “magic shadow show” lit by the sun far off somewhere across the lone sea miles astern.
The sea routine has commenced: deep down in the stokehold firemen with cadaverous faces turned to the furnace blaze are toiling away. They look like shadows in the flame-lit gloom, like dead men working out their penance in hell. Attired in pants and a sweater only, with their hairy chests steaming with running perspiration, they work furiously. Their conversation is made up chiefly of oaths and forcible criticism on the lack of generosity they found in Bill or Jim, who only stood them ten drinks ashore, after all they had treated them to on that first spree night of the last trip. They are not bad men, and as they spit out the coal-dust in a thick mass from their stained lips, and take a gulp of condensed water to quench their thirst, I feel deeply sorry for them, and realise that they are the unsung heroes of the sea. I look at the row of unshaved faces thrust forward to the roaring fires, and at their shrivelled hands and big arms moving the long steel stoking bars, and wonder at the marvellous strength and virtue of the hard-working ship’s firemen.
On deck, like iced wine to my lips, I drink in the fresh sea breeze. It is dark. I cannot turn in, for I should not sleep, so I go into the fo’c’sle and watch the sailors playing cards, then return on deck and look over the ship’s side. Under the pendulous, curved moon—for it seems to sway to the roll of the rigging—the mate’s form moves to and fro as he tramps the bridge. The sailing ship that we sighted on the weather-side at sunset is now only a tiny travelling star low down on the ocean darkness far astern, where her mast head-light shines.
The weariness of the sea’s monotony is on me; we have been to sea long enough to be half-way across the Atlantic. The weather is much colder. The moon is large and low, and looks like a ghostly arch to the south, for it seems half submerged far away on the edge of the ocean, that seems shivering for miles with silver mystery. Just over the side I watch the mirrored masts and rigging glide along with us as though a ghostly ship is following; and the hours fly and dawn breaks greyly, and once more the tramp steamer is surrounded by blue sky-lines, till sunset sinks to a wild blaze in the western arch of the sky. The sailors go on watch. The cook washes his pots and pans ere he cuts his corns and turns into his bunk.
The wind’s voice murmurs mournfully in the rigging and round the bridge awnings; as the night grows older it swells to a tremendous voice that is really me! for it is the re-echo of my own hearing and dreaming consciousness. I fancy I hear the hounds of death racing across the wild sea moors as shadows dropping from the flying clouds go running over the moonlit sea, and now, as though a door in the sky is opened, the stars and moon are driven and shut away in the outer Universe. For a mighty sheet of storm-cloud slides across the heavens. The world is changed to an infinity of dark and wind, and the one dim figure of the look-out man on the fo’c’sle head. The thundering seas slowly rise with their white crests glowing in the ebon darkness as the brave old tramp steamer, like a frightened thing, stays her way a moment, and shivers as seas strike the weather bow. Then again she pitches onward, as wonderful little men, with bony, haggard faces with weary eyes in them, stare into the furnace fires of the steamer’s bowels, and shovel and stoke to sustain an honest existence, and drink tank water. No wonder they drink beer when they get the chance. I am quite sure I should.
A week later we sighted the cliffs of England, and soon after the sea tramp touched the wharf at Liverpool with a jerk and a shiver, and went to sleep among a forest of masts and funnels till her next trip.
CHAPTER V
Home—On an Orient Liner—The Orchestra—A Sailing Ship—Paganini—Port Said—Honolulu