That old sea priest loved hymns. He was truly religious, and often sat turning the leaves of his well-fingered Bible. Abide with me, fast falls the eventide was a favourite hymn of his. I think I must have played it to him a hundred times, so that now the melody to me suggests ships far out at sea; and the old shellback, whom I loved, used to sit on his sea-chest telling us boys of the wooden ships that went down the seas and came back from other lands laden with scented cargoes, and that have faded away into the romantic dreams of this generation.
The remainder of the crew were a mixed lot, not very different from the usual run of sailors on tramp steamers. They were quiet men, and had little to do with the firemen and trimmers, who inhabited that half-fo’c’sle that was portioned off for them. I remember one of them was a “shilling-a-monther,” working his passage to the Colonies for his health. He was a fine, broad-chested fellow, but in consumption, and whenever he was off duty he seemed to be busy rubbing his chest with oils. He had quite a dozen bottles at the foot of his bunk, which he had purchased in London from quacks: each bottle held oil that was a certain cure for consumption! We were very friendly with each other. I often helped him and, following his instructions, rubbed his back with the oils till the flesh was red. His little hacking cough would disappear for several days and he would be quite cheerful; then the cough would return and blood-spitting follow, and I felt very sorry for him, especially as, when he felt better, he would hit his chest with his fist and show me that he was at last cured.
Playing cards or dominoes, sleeping and smoking were the usual excitements of the crew. On duty, they washed the decks down with the hose, tramped their watches, rolled ropes, cleaned brass work, and followed the most monotonous life under the sun. After rounding the Cape to run the Easter down they became busy with the sails, which helped the engines, when the wind was fair, to urge the vessel on the lonely voyage. A trip across the world on a sailing ship is very different from a voyage on a tramp steamer. She rides the waves and seeks the winds, and like a mammoth bird thing, with men singing chanteys climbing along the bones of her spread wings, she races the clouds that fly overhead, and seems to sway the moon, stars or sun as she rolls and pitches along.
The crews of sailing ships when I was a boy were a different type of men from the crews of tramp boats. They were real sailors, or young fellows who had taken to sea life to learn to be sailors. A few of the old-time men among them, with their weather-beaten faces and old sea ways, gave that atmosphere to the fo’c’sle that has now gone for ever.
It must have been the romantic dreamer’s paradise to go down to the sea in sailing ships before the world was worldly. I can imagine those old sailors, uneducated and superstitious, on the great ocean waters, watching the sky-lines and the dying sunsets as they dreamed of undiscovered shores, or by night on deck fancied they could hear the breakers beating against the starlit sky-line where loomed the shores of Eternity. Time and science have swept all that away from the sea for ever. To-day the seaman stands on the deck and thinks of the latest trade union grievance.
The ways of the ocean no longer suggest eternity behind the stars, or undiscovered lands afar inhabited by strange peoples. To him the ocean tracks are simply the main highways to New York, London and the Colonial cities, and to ports that are like railway stations of the high seas. Passengers get off at Suez, Colombo, Sydney or Apia and catch the next boat or train as the quartermaster shouts: “All aboard! Make haste, ladies and gentlemen.” Rich puffing ladies and gentlemen with their daughters reship with their touring luggage for the next port, and they drag their deck-chairs and pet poodles behind them.
Old-time romance of thought has hardened and petrified into our stone carved, grey terraced cities; but the blue horizons of dreams sparkle on for ever! Yet withal, I have enjoyed two blessings in life. One is to have been born civilised, for I have never wanted to hurt a man or do anything really outrageous. The other is to have been born in civilised times that have enabled me to wander the world unarmed and safe; to have sniffed the tropical winds, seas and flowers of far-off countries, and gazed across primeval plains or on the mountain peaks of lonely isles; to have heard the mighty silence of vast forests and peered into the eyes of semi-savage peoples.
The cook of that tramp steamer was a strange old seaman, who drank gin and seldom spoke. He had a gnarled, stolid-looking face and expressionless eyes, very deep set. The green and flower of his youth had left him for ever; not a sentimental leaf or faded flower lingered in his memory.
He reminded me of the mummified, blackened face of an old native I saw once, who still stood erect, just as he had died, in the hollow of a huge tree trunk in a forest of New Caledonia, a tree wherein he had taken shelter just before it was struck by lightning! Heat had blistered the dead face till it resembled gnarled bark. There was still a glassy gleam deep in the eye-sockets, for though the eyes had gone ants had eaten the back of the head away, and so light crept through from behind, where there was a small decayed hole in the tree trunk. It was very faint though, and as I stood a little way off that awful facial expression reminded me of some hideous living mortal, whose soul slept, mole-like, in the cold, winter sleep of age, dead, yet still alive long after the real owner had committed suicide by strangling all his passions.
It is strange how such sights impress us and cling to our memory, for we meet dead men daily, whose faculties are fungus growths; we see their moving lips, shake their dead hands and wonder on the stony expression of their eyes, eyes that have not even the light of heaven behind them, as it lit up that Caledonia mummy’s eye-sockets.