Another incident affected the administration. An apprentice, whose stature brought him, beyond the chance of escape, the nickname Little Tich, and who was generally being bantered by someone or other, was cleaning the brasswork of the compass in the wheel-house. Meacock went in to take a bearing. The bearing he got nonplussed him, and he got Mead to try. Mead also found the needle giving strange evidence. Suddenly it dawned upon them that its delusion was due to a tremendous dagger worn by the very small and keenly occupied Tich.
The Bonadventure maintained her mended pace, and also her awkward list, which conspired with a strong swell; thus it was that the “fiddle” so necessary to the safety of cups and plates in the Bay of Biscay reappeared at this late stage. The nights were beautiful, with their white moon and moonlight far over the water, their stars, few, and of the moon’s glowing whiteness, the light veilings of cloud blown in silence about the sky, and little else heard except the subdued measure of the ship’s engines, the lapping repulse of waves from the bows, and the sharp call of birds ahead and astern. Well might Mead be glad of his roving temperament, as on his watch we talked and smoked above the expanse of rimpled water, and looked towards the sword-like lightnings in the south.
XIII
We came into grey waters, and also into a grey sort of day, overcast and moody. In the evening the wind was strong from the land, and laden with that earthy scent which had so surprised me when I first encountered it; a languid, rich and beguiling perfume, that is tomb-like and unnerving in its suggestion, rising over us. It made out for me the spirit of Tom Hood’s last song, if it was his last song; the one beginning “Farewell, life, my senses swim”; its first verse ending “I smell the Mould above the Rose,” and its second, “I smell the Rose above the Mould.”
Hosea engaged me in discussion of Tennyson and Edwin Arnold. He had been carrying out a lively campaign in his room, where an unwelcome insect had appeared lately; one would have doubted whether any insect, however irrepressible, could have existed in the atmosphere of cigar smoke which he daily thickened in that room of his. But there it was, the bug had been seen, and the whole room was overhauled.
This did not in any way deflect him from his evening pursuit of the abstract. His resolution in following a problem through its own difficult aspects, combined with his control of the Bonadventure, often made me wonder whether he was typical of his fellow-captains. Though, as he said, the roaring-bull style of master mariner was almost extinct, I could not help thinking him singular.
I woke at about four, following an inquiry into some remote subject, from a dream of roaring thunderbolts, out of whose red and whizzing track I was crouching on the lee side of barns and cowsheds. I looked out; there was a loud wind much like that which brought the storm of the other Sunday. I went back to bed a little disappointed. This squall left the makings of a very good breeze blowing and moreover lowered the temperature. The mate complained of his khaki shorts; the second mate had had to bring out another blanket, although it was a sunny morning. The colour of the sea was changing as we went at a striking rate; but prevailing, in those shallower roads turbid with silt or sand was a greenness as of horse-chestnut leaves at their prime. Here and there were dark acres of discoloured water drifting by, contrasting magnificently with the green and its bright white-crested waves. The afternoon brought into sight the dim shapes of coastline with those now less familiar things trees and houses. This advance was welcomed by Mead and the apprentices who lived in his alleyway with spirited but not spiritual songs.
The next day, Hosea was very early at the door of the wireless operator’s cabin, endeavouring to get a reply from the ship’s agents in Monte Video, to questions sent some days before. I do not think he succeeded. There was, however, much buzzing, and I got up to enjoy the time of day. It was still keen outside–“a nipping and an eager air”–the sky being blue and the sun unclouded none the less; over the drab green sea, a seagull or two in their lordly fashions flapping against the wind; to starboard, in a gentle haze, a view of rugged shore. This point was one of mountainous eminences, rolling like larger Downs, with white cliffs or sandy beaches under their light red masses. Other steamers were in our neighbourhood, on the same course out or home, some bright with new paint, others scarred and rusty. Probably they were having tripe in batter for breakfast like ourselves, the prose part of me suggested; and I felt with gratitude that I must have become a new and better man, who could now face and even look forward to a food which had hitherto only interested me as a favourite with C. Lamb.
The continued cold caused me to return to socks; but I delayed the reinstatement of the collar, which I had found no such necessity to human happiness.