Our captain was a Naval Reserve man who carried himself with incurable haughtiness. He saw life’s great drama and the light of creation only by being awestruck at himself and measuring all vastness from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. The chief engineer was a jolly Scotsman, who tipped the convivial chief steward and so always had a bottle of whisky under his bunk. When he was “half-seas-over” he sang Ye Banks and Braes and Will Ye No’ Come Back Again? as the engines thumped and the tramp steamer rolled and pitched along the highway of the world. We ran into terrifically bad weather, and with the sails set, for the wind was fair, the old engines crashed away as she pitched and the screw blades bobbed up behind.
I have never followed the sea directly as a profession, but I have lived and communed with the hearts of sailors, held their hands in warm comradeship, as well as shared their hardships at sea and ashore. And so I have read them as they cannot read the sea or themselves. To the majority of sailors to have been to sea, say for twenty years, simply means to them, “I’ve been to sea for twenty years,” and means nothing more. To have been able to go to sea mentally, as well as physically, and to have been thrilled by the wild poetry of the wind’s songs and the romance of the sea, is to be in a strong sense a sailor of sailors. While the average sailor can still chew tobacco and tell you the names of ropes, women and grog shanties in distant seaports, I cannot even chew tobacco; but I can sit in my little room and watch the thundering seas tossing by my bedside, ablaze with the true light of sea romance, while sailing ships, with their crews aloft singing chanteys full of joy, pass and repass through my bedroom door, outbound for the seaports of the world.
About a week later the albatross that sailed the winds with restless eyes behind us night and day wheeled round and put out for the open sea, for we were nearing the coast of Australia. I went ashore in Adelaide and got two shillings’ worth of tomatoes for a treat. The man on the wharf helped my chum carry them. They gave me half-a-hundredweight for two shillings!
Adelaide is a real old Colonial seaboard town. I bought a good violin there and a lot of strings. We left next day for Melbourne, and I played the violin the whole way. In Melbourne the stowaway bolted, and the donkeyman swore all the way to Sydney, for the careful London arab started life in the new land with his “go-ashore boots” and shirts, as well as taking, in case of emergency, about forty plugs of the crew’s allowance tobacco. We did not feel sorry for the stowaway in his venture in a new life; he had the annexing instincts of the old British stock, and we all felt he would do well in Australia.
I very seldom made a round trip and so, bidding the old boatswain good-bye, after taking him ashore to hear him mutter for the last time “Shiver my timbers,” I left the ship.
CHAPTER XIX
Yokohama—A Japanese Family—Pretty Sarawana—A Tea-house Festival—A Geisha Orchestra—Sun Worship—Stowaways in the Stokehold—Reflections—The Kind Skipper
I STAYED in Sydney for a few weeks and finally got on a Japanese ship, the Maru, and eventually arrived at Yokohama. I had never been to Japan before, and after tea I hurried ashore. On the wharf stood rows of Japanese low-caste women, dressed like guys. They had black teeth, and faces that looked as though they were carved out of yellow wood, and voices that went “honk-ki-hong-ki-ko koo ko,” as though they had an orange in their throats. Their toes turned inward and their eyes outward, and Japanese flies built their hives in their thick, matted hair. It was hot, muggy weather. I was very disappointed at first, but when I got up into the city and found myself walking among crowds of fascinating Japanese people, all jabbering and shuffling along in clogs, I became interested. I had some dim expectation of seeing bamboo dwellings and Oriental fairyland trees, with Japanese lanterns hanging on them. Instead of which I saw fine buildings, well-lit streets and beautiful parks with lakes in them, surrounded by maple and cherry-trees. Boats were being paddled on the lake by Japanese girls dressed in pale blue kimonos and with hibiscus and cherry blossom in their hair. You can never forget that you are in Japan because of the strange language that hums in your ears as you pass along, dreaming you hear the sandalled, shuffling feet of some old ghostly Assyrian city and the hubbub of the population talking across the silent ages.
Next day I went to Tokio; it was only a few miles away, about twenty, I think. There I saw real old Japan, and went off into the Oriental dark ages. I saw painted, red-lipped beauties with slit-shaped dark eyes and faces like dolls, being carried in sedan-chairs in copper-lid-shaped hats. Fanning themselves, they passed by and were carried to the palm-house and down corridors to their mats. I made the acquaintance of a Japanese sailor; he was a genuine fellow, and took a lot of trouble to satisfy my curiosity. I was introduced to his family; they lived at Suraka, if I remember the name aright. I went into their house, a wicker bungalow, and was greeted with, “O Hayo!”[[14]] Two daughters in kimonos, pink and orange-yellow, waited on me, bowing and curtseying in Eastern style. The old mother was intelligent-looking; she had a face like a South Sea idol, with kind, dove-like eyes. The room was covered with soft mats, and the walls, of matted panels, were carved with Oriental designs. I felt exceedingly happy as I sat by the Oriental maidens and ate savoury rice and fowl and drank saki. The daughters screamed with laughter as I used chopsticks instead of the fork which they gave me. I slept there that night and went with the family next day to see the sights, among them the Asakusa Temple, where they worshipped the goddess Kwannon. Beautiful green lands surrounded the Oriental city. Sarawana, my Japanese sailor’s sister, shuffled beside me, chatting away in Japanese as hard as her tongue could go, and pointing to the cherry and plum trees in full bloom; the quaint old mother and the others came on behind. They think a great deal of their cherry and plum trees, but as I gazed at them I thought of dear old England. I did not hear the blackbird singing in those cherry-trees; I only saw large crimson butterflies flitting over the boughs, and, on the fair slopes, strange bamboo-fenced bungalows, instead of the country cottages and smoking chimneys of Kent.