It is one of the most wonderful attributes of the modern Press that it can, at any time between midnight and publishing hours, collate and elaborate the biography of a man who hitherto has been entirely obscure, and considering the speed of the work, and the difficulties which hedge it in, these lightning life sketches are often surprisingly full of accuracies. But let the frillings in this case be fact or fiction, there was no doubt that Kettle and his crew had saved a shipload of panic-stricken foreign emigrants, and (to help point the moral) within the year, in an almost similar case, another shipload had been drowned through that same blind, helpless, hopeless panic. The pride of race bubbled through the British Daily Press in prosaic long primer and double-leaded bourgeois. There was no saying aloud, "We rejoice that an Englishman has done this thing, after having it proved to us that it was above the foreigner's strength." The newspaper man does not rhapsodize. But the sentiment was there all the same, and it was that which actuated the sudden wave of enthusiasm which thrilled the country.
Strangers came up and wrung Kettle's unwilling hand.
The Flamingo was worked into dock, and a cheering crowd surged aboard of her in unrestrainable thousands. Strangers came up and wrung Kettle's unwilling hand, and dropped tears on his coat-sleeve; and when he swore at them, they only wept the more and smiled through the drops. It was magnificent, splendid, gorgeous. Here was a man! Who said that England would ever lose her proud place among the nations when she could still find men like Oliver Kelly--or Kattle--or Cuttle, or whatever this man was called, amongst her obscure merchant captains?
Even Mr. Isaac Bird, managing owner, caught some of the general enthusiasm, and withheld, for the present, the unpleasant remarks which occurred to him as suitable, touching Kettle's neglect of the firm's interest in favor of a parcel of bankrupt foreigners. But Kettle himself had the subject well in mind. When all this absurd fuss was over, then would come the reckoning; and whilst the crowd was cheering him, he was figuring out the value of the jettisoned cargo, and whilst pompous Mr. Isaac was shaking him by the hand and making a neat speech for the ear of casual reporters, poor Kettle was conjuring up visions of the workhouse and pauper's corduroy.
But the Fates were moving now in a manner which was beyond his experience. The public, which had ignored his bare existence before for all of a lifetime, suddenly discovered that he was a hero, and that, too, without knowing half the facts. The Press, with its finger on the public's pulse, published Kettle literature in lavish columns. It gave twenty different "eye-witnesses' accounts" of the rescue. It gave long lists of "previous similar disasters." It drew long morals in leading articles. And finally, it took all the little man's affairs under its consideration, and settled them with a lordly hand.
"Who pays for the cargo Captain Kuttle threw overboard?" one paper headed an article; whilst another wrote perfervidly about "Cattle ruined for his bravery." Here was a new and striking side issue. Lloyds' were not responsible. Should the week's hero pay the bill himself out of his miserable savings? Certainly not. The owners of the Grosser Carl were the benefiting parties, and it was only just that they should take up the expense. So the entire Press wired off to the German firm, and next morning were able to publish a positive assurance that of course these grateful foreigners would reimburse all possible outlay.
The subject of finance once broached, it was naturally discovered that the hero toiled for a very meagre pittance, that he was getting on in years, and had a wife and family depending on him--and--promptly, there opened out the subscription lists. People were stirred, and they gave nicely, on the lower scale certainly, with shillings and guineas predominating; but the lists totalled up to £2,400, which to some people, of course, is gilded affluence.
Now Captain Kettle had endured all this publicity with a good deal of restiveness, and had used language to one or two interviewers who managed to ferret him out, which fairly startled them; but this last move for a public subscription made him furious. He spoke in the captain's room of the hostelry he used, of the degradation which was put on him, and various other master mariners who were present entirely agreed with him. "I might be a blessed missionary, or India-with-a-famine, the way they're treating me," he complained bitterly. "If they call a meeting to give me anything, I'll chuck the money in their faces, and let them know straight what I think. By James! do they suppose I've got no pride? Why can't they let me alone? If the Grosser Carl people pay up for that cargo, that's all I want."