As those rough men became involved in a good deal that concerns my reminiscences, I will bring the reader into closer touch with them. As they crept up on to the deck, after a sound night’s rest, they would yawn and gaze about them, and then stare at the blue sky. Possibly they were thankful to be alive, maybe had just said their prayers. “No fear,” I hear you say. Well, it is faithfully recorded in the annals of beachcomberism that two or three of those sinful old shellbacks knelt by their bunks every night—and said their prayers.
Passing down the plank gangway in single file to the sands, they made a bee-line for the Alpha and Omega of their existence—Ranjo’s grog shanty. In that low-roofed saloon of the Southern Seas they sat enthroned on salt-beef tubs. Smoking their corn-cob pipes, they chewed plug tobacco, and proceeded religiously with their toilet—that is to say, one little small-tooth comb was handed around and each one combed his hair and tangled whiskers. One could search the world over and never sight so perfect a set of noble-looking vagabonds. Each one seemed some wonderful figurehead, some symbolical, living representative of a nation’s typical emotion and crimes. They were far from being bad men, notwithstanding their twinkling eyes and grog-blossomed nasal organs. I’m not going into details over their birth and the university they honoured. I know nothing about their lost opportunities; only one thing am I certain of—they were once boys. And, believe me, the boy, in a beautiful sense, still laughed and looked through their wicked eyes. Though dead for years, the boy’s ghost still lived, and shed tears when the chill came as hope ran high. It did the same childish things—gave away the last shilling when it should have been kept; and ah! how many more ridiculous, boyish deeds. They were, in short, the world’s worst men, and, as one knows, the world’s worst men have virtues that are undreamed of in the hearts of the world’s best men.
The tallest was a typical Yankee specimen. I never saw so perfect a resemblance to a cartoon in the flesh as “Uncle Sam.” His face was cadaverous, alert and pleasant-looking. The poise of his head told of imagined greatness, as one who felt that he had helped to create the universe as well as being a representative of the land of the almighty dollar. His chin resembled that of an aged billy-goat. Whenever he yawned or spat vindictively and yelled, “Waal, I guess,” his long, pointed beard inclined towards the roof. Another represented three races: Japan, the South Sea and Yankeeland. This mixture had made an argumentative strain. Nor could he help it, however he tried. The three separate emotions of three separate strains would come into forcible conflict during pugnacious arguments—consequently one of his ears was missing.
Yet another represented the Shamrock, the Thistle and the Rose. He had a huge, humorous mouth, merry blue eyes and a high bald head; a head that was a veritable incubator for hatching wildly unprofitable schemes. Ah! schemes that cracked through their shells so easily, just to flutter a little way and fall with broken wings, yes, on their first flight. Sometimes a new-born scheme even fluttered so far as to settle on a twig and sing sweetly for a moment, as though it yearned to express the hopelessness it felt, to write verse on the leaves with its tuneful beak, so that the old beachcombers would cheer with delight as they watched and yell deliriously:
“At last! at last! we’ve struck rich!”—and then it fell—dead at their feet.
In that motley crew was not one true representative of the John Bull type. There’s no denying the fact, but the typical John Bull is too avid of comfort and abnormal self-respect, and all that is conventional, to be found sitting on a tub in a grog shanty in the South Seas. It was even ridiculous to expect to find a true Britisher there. To annex a continent, or even an isle, to explain the religious significance of the annexation, while hiding that renowned smile behind the old red, white and blue John Bull handkerchief, was natural enough; but to find him sitting on an empty salt-beef tub in the South Seas—why, impossible, absurd!
Should he by chance be found there, rest assured it is in some mongrel state: some Britisher with the ravishing strain of the hilarious, inconsequential, romantic Irish; or the Odyssean strain of the Italian cavalier or Spanish hidalgo’s blood pulsing in his veins. Though, stay—there was one, by name Bill Grimes, a representative of the much-abused Cockney.
Men have toiled over the inscrutable wonders of Cockneyism. The short clay pipe, the black teeth, the perky shuffle of vile impertinence and blasphemous oaths have bedecked many a novelist’s pages with inky crime.
Believe me, Bill Grimes was a real out and outer good ’un. It is true enough that he chewed vilely and spat deliberately, so as not to miss, with that streaming certitude of black tobacco juice, when anyone capped his argument with indisputable conviction. But do not men argue the world over? Is it not far better to have a straightforward squirt of honest tobacco juice in one’s eye than life-long, stealthy enmity behind one’s back?
Ah, Bill Grimes (he’s dead now), the blue of your eyes was not counterfeit; your heart and voice had the genuine touch and true ring of the last half-crown you so often shared.