Dirty weather is, perhaps, more than ever the opportunity of this hardy and hard-bitten race, of whom it has been said that “every finger is a fish-hook, every hair a rope-yarn, and whose blood is pure Stockholm tar.” Mother Carey’s chickens—by which I mean, of course, the gulls—are not more at home amid the mountainous waves at such times. They cruise about in these dangerous seas in search of some captain who has lost his way. It is exquisitely true that other people’s misfortunes are their opportunity, and a ship likely without the aid of their expert knowledge of these waters to come to grief on the Goodwins, or other shoals, to say nothing of getting under the unkindly cliffs, is like a choice bone to a hungry dog. I hope I do no injustice to these men in the comparison. It simply discloses the measure of their needs and of their prize. It is a desperate livelihood for these days for them. The winter is hard, the summer season is short, and the fishing and the money earned in taking visitors for a sail form but a scanty and uncertain support for wives and children. Therefore, a ship in difficulties is a godsend that is worth a good deal of cruising for, and worth a good deal of hardship endured and bitter disappointments suffered. But when that ship is picked up there are no more savage and determined men to be found than these. They are embittered by much fruitless quartering of violent seas, and spurred by the thought of weeks of enforced idleness ashore, and by the spectre of empty cupboards at home. A shipmaster in peril out there is their legitimate prey, and they bear down upon him out of the driving spindrift as saviours, at a price. These men, who would, and do, man the lifeboats for life-saving with no after-thought for profit, are close dealers in these cases, and if a ship-master declines, for reasons of economy, their help, he may drive on sands or under cliffs or lose his ship in any way that chance may dictate, and they will not lend a helping hand. And quite rightly, too. Help under such circumstances is well worth the paying for.
“Want any help, sir?” Thus, or in some such way, comes their hail as their craft comes round in the eye of the wind and manœuvres carefully in the swashing seas. It is odds whether the captain, asking perhaps where he is, will be told, or whether he is flatly invited to “find out,” in the extremely strong language of these parts. Perhaps he asks “how much to take her into Ramsgate,” or whatever port he is making for.
“Twenty pounds”—or ten or fifteen, as the case may be, according to his emergencies.
Bargaining is little use. An offer of half, or more, is pretty sure to be curtly rejected, with “So long, captain; no time to waste.”
And then the bargainer almost invariably submits, ungraciously enough with “All right, you —— pirates,” or “beachcombers,” or something equally offensive. Strong language is cheap on the seas, and no one resents it, least of all the hovellers and the boatmen who have thus gained their point: it is all the harassed master has left him, and he may put his tongue to what strange curses he will, if it be any satisfaction.
And then, at a carefully chosen moment, as the vessels large and small set to one another in a peculiarly violent kind of maritime dance and the boatmen’s little craft swings dizzily up on a wave alongside, a rope is thrown and one of the galley-punt’s crew clambers breathlessly aboard, dashes the brine from his eyes, and is ready to navigate his charge through the seething waters as surely as a cab-driver takes a fare through well-known streets. His companions, sitting like statues in the boat, in streaming yellow oilskins, fade away like ghosts in the turmoil, and make for home.
Such are at those times the men you will see lounging the summer days on Deal beach and suggesting to visitors that it is a “fine day for a sail.” It looks a lazy life, this lounging, with hands in pockets, day after day, varied by an occasional turn with the tar-brush or paint-pot upon boat or timbered shanty; but it is really a life of one long waiting for something to turn up, and there is nothing else for it but to lounge hands in pockets. And to do the Deal boatmen the merest justice, they lounge extremely well. Do not mistake me: I do not mean that they do it elegantly. The figure of your typical ’longshoreman, bargelike and extremely solid, does not permit of that. No, I mean that he absolutely abandons himself to it. There used to be in London, and in society, the Bond Street and the Hyde Park lounge. I believe the exquisite insouciance thus indicated is long since extinct. No one lounges now, in these days of motor-cars and general hustle; no one, that is to say, except the ’longshoremen of Deal and elsewhere, but here at Deal it is perfected. The lounge of Hyde Park—you may see it represented in Punch, in many of du Maurier’s drawings—was a graceful droop over the railings of the Row; but the lounger had always in the look of him a curious mixture of world-weariness and self-consciousness. He knew he was beautiful, as beautiful as his tailor and toilet-club could make him. Now the ’longshoreman cannot droop, gracefully or otherwise. He is not built that way. There is about him a breadth of beam and an appalling negation of waist that vehemently forbids the very thought of it. He is not beautiful, nor, on the other hand, is he self-conscious. He is of that solid bulk, despite his privations, poor chap, which makes the crazy old capstans on the beach creak and complain, and the tarred shanties shiver when he leans against them. And his costume has been the delight of serious artists and comic for at least a century. His trousers, of some astounding dreadnought material that might almost stand by itself, come a much longer distance up his body than such articles of attire commonly do, and end, according to the caricaturists, under his armpits. According to the same unveracious authorities, they are invariably re-seated, and with materials of an altogether alien colour from the original fabric and generally with some uproarious pattern.
CHAPTER XVIII
WALMER CASTLE—KINGSDOWN—ST. MARGARET’S BAY
The low, beachy shore of Deal continues westward through Lower Walmer, the chief part of Walmer lying inland where the road begins to take its rise towards the high rolling downs which fill the miles on to Dover. The beach road runs on for two miles and a half, past Walmer Castle to Kingsdown, where it abruptly ends.