Lastly: Porter. Where on earth did he shoulder trunks and bawl "By y'r leave"? Was it amid the echoing vastness of a London terminus, with its smoke and gloom? Or—and this I think the more probable—was it on some sleepy branch-line that he rang a bell or waved a flag, collected tickets, and clattered to and fro with fine effect in enormous hobnail boots? Then one fine day ... but imagination falters here, leaving us no nearer the reason why he exchanged his green corduroys for the jumper and collar. And if we asked him (which we cannot very well), I doubt if he could tell himself.
They make a motley collection, these tinkers and tailors and candlestick-makers, but in time they filter through the same mould, and emerge, as a rule, vastly improved. You may sometimes encounter them, in railway stations or tram-cars, returning on leave to visit a home that has become no more than an amiable memory.
And some day, maybe, you will advertise for a caretaker, or one to do odd jobs about the house and garden, whose wife can do plain cooking. Look out then for the man with tattooed wrists, and eyes that meet yours unflinching from a weather-beaten face. He will come to apply in person for the job—being no great scribe or believer in the power of the pen. He will arrange his visit so as to arrive towards evening,—this being, he concludes, your "stand-easy time." He wastes few words, but from the breast-pocket of an obviously ready-made jacket he will produce a creased and soiled sheet of parchment.
It is the record of his life: and after two-and-twenty years through which the frayed passport has brought him, at forty years of age, he turns to you for employment and a life wherein (it is his one stipulation) "there shall be no more sea."
XXIII.
THE GREATER LOVE.
The sun was setting behind a lurid bank of cloud above the hills of Spain, and, as is usual at Gibraltar about that hour, a light breeze sprang up. It eddied round the Rock and scurried across the harbour, leaving dark cat's-paws in its trail: finally it reached the inner mole, alongside which a cruiser was lying.
A long pendant of white bunting, that all day had hung listlessly from the main top-mast, stirred, wavered, and finally bellied out astern, the gilded bladder at the tail bobbing uneasily over the surface of the water.
The Officer of the Watch leaned over the rail and watched the antics of the bladder, round which a flock of querulous gulls circled and screeched. "The paying-off pendant[#] looks as if it were impatient," he said laughingly to an Engineer Lieutenant standing at his side.
[#] A pendant, one-and-a-quarter times the length of the ship, flown by ships homeward bound under orders to pay off.