Then, however, another ship belonging to the same company with the Bonadventure was seen afar through the afternoon. As the two drew level, ceremony took place. The houseflag was dipped and raised and dipped again by both; the red ensign was dipped; and the homeward-bound sounded her monosyllable three times, to which our own whistle replied in equal number. This, as old-fashioned a courtesy as could be wished, excited several others aboard the Bonadventure besides the tyro; and as the chief engineer began his tea, he thus referred to the prevailing spirit.
“–Well, so we passed one of our ships again to-day! I was lying in my hammock asleep, when the mess-room boy came running up, panting out: ‘Sir, here’s one of our ships!’ And I mumbled out something like, ‘All right, John, there’s room enough for us to pass, isn’t there?’ Everybody was seemingly out on deck, peering up at the mate to see if he had forgotten the flags; everybody was staring at the funnel with the eye of expectancy, wondering ‘When the hell’s that damn’d whistle going?’–I didn’t get up for it. I suppose that’s equivalent to contempt of court or high treason.”
The bland face of the sage lighted up with pleasure as he carefully gave us this impression of his.
After the storm, the air was thunder-heavy all that day. Great dragon-flies, and butterflies in sultry brown and red, and that must have been borne out to sea on the strong breeze, were fluttering over the decks and the water. At night, there was abundant lightning in the distance: most of all on the eastern horizon, with its world of waters, the flashes were of a dusky redness, and of vague mountainous outline. They came fast and furious, until the moon at last seemed to overawe such wild carouse, and in good earnest to govern the night; while in a deep blue darkness, among the folds of white cloud, stars shone with new clearness. Under this celestial content, the Bonadventure moved over a gleaming sea.
Mead, on his watch, was troubled. He sought in his mind a life better paid and more exciting. Every few moments, he would add some detail aloud to a scheme for piracy in these waters, which he thought might be made a profitable occupation. He pictured a coaster, duly registered, running with ordinary cargo to and fro, but on the lines of a “Q” boat, a sort of marine wolf in sheep’s clothing, armed with torpedo tubes. In all respects, himself being already chosen as captain, its crew should form a co-operative society. The pirate should carry a wireless installation of the noisiest sort. In brief, the whole scheme appealed to him so warmly that he was ready, apart from details to be arranged, especially a financier, to put it into practice. Me he would accept as purser, not so much because I showed any promise as a book-keeper, as that I had been in an infantry battalion in the Line.
The ship was slowing down, and the chief was worried. One morning he offered me employment, “cleaning the tubes. You come round to my place.” I went round at about nine, when the ship’s engines were stopped, and found that he had as ever been amusing himself in his quiet way. He himself, with the firemen, was now ready to act as the ship’s chimney-sweeps. After a full morning’s work, masked in sweat and soot, they came up on deck again from the job. I did not regret my earlier “disappointment.” Relieved of the clogging soot, the Bonadventure ran with fresh speed, against a tough head wind. For the first time for some days, one heard the harsh drumming of the excess of steam escaping through its valve. The wind drove the water, hereabouts of a jade green colour, into long waves and their fine manes of spray, upon which the sun made many a small and fleeting rainbow. With this head wind piping, and the cargo, it seemed, having shifted lately, the ship had an uncomfortable list to port and swayed as she went. “Here, you,” cried Meacock to me, “your extra weight on the port side’s doing this.” “Yes, it’s perfectly plain he is the Jonah of the voyage.”
A dozen big black birds appeared as travelling companions, white-breasted and easy-going. At a closer view, I found that they were not properly black but of that dingy russet grey towards which old mushrooms grow. They seemed never to clap their wings, but sailed as our gulls do on the wind, wheeling and looping with a leisurely grace, and patrolling the sea as closely as an owl beats a meadow without wetting a wing-tip.
Nor was this the only token of our nearing our first destination. Shore-going suits and boots were out in the sun already. The steward’s usual attitude became that of a priest, as he carried the captain’s suits gingerly here and there.
But there was still time for trouble. A relapse in the sainted manner of the old fellow occurred one day at breakfast. The most tremendous roarings, himself and the offending donkeyman in turn or in chorus, suddenly broke out, and ended in the steward’s ascent with a complaint to Hosea. Then, one evening, after my quiet enjoyment of the pure blue sky after a shower, with its Southern Cross and the false cross and other stars strange to me glittering marvellously keen, I went in to my cabin to write, when I instantly perceived something in the air. A most pungent aroma, indeed, had been instilled through the house; and going to inquire I found Cyrano of Cardiff kneeling on the saloon floor, applying a special kind of red paint. Properly, he said, it was used for the keels of ships. I thought too that that was its proper application.
At dinner, too, events took a serious turn. When I had in previous days heard spaghetti hailed as Wind-pipes, for instance, I had realized the phrase as a humorous hyperbole. But now the tinned meat problem presented itself to me in a more sinister light–I was not so sure! There before me was a godless lump of briny red fat and stringy appendages floating more or less in a thick brown liquid which demanded the spectacles of optimism. A reinforcement of stony beans did not mend the matter. The meat, as it fell out, wore a portion of skin, remarkable for prickly excrescences, and hinting that I was about to batten on the relics of a young porcupine, or at least peculiar pork. Presently I asked Meacock what sort of flesh this was. He answered: “O Lord, I don’t know–it’s–well, I don’t think you can get beyond tinned meat.”