We remained only a few minutes in this new position. Then we moved into a dock, lined with warehouses as they appeared, under whose grey tin roofs were stacked bags of grain in large profusion. With much shouting and manipulating of ropes, we got in, behind the steamer Caxambu; alongside a framework of piles. On these, even the less accessible slanting timbers, many a ship’s name scrawled in black or red paint, and often followed by the date of the call, addressed the new-comer’s eye. In these inscriptions the S’s, B’s, D’s, and 9’s, had a tendency to be reversed. I thought that the exotic poets and others who deny their readers capital letters, apostrophes and so forth might here find another inspiration. The medley of names included such as the Trebarthan, the King Arthur, the Alf, the Olive, the Bilbao. And the Keats; why Keats? Apart from this mystery, I could not help contrasting many of the names with those of the figure-head days, and like the posy of a ring, some of them came into my mind, from my reading, the John and Judith, Charming Nancy, Love and Unity, Lancashire Witch.
Here, the heat seemed to redouble, and the flies to bite harder accordingly. For some time nothing much happened. The Captain, after being visited by the doctor, ship’s chandler and others, but not such a swarm as on our previous berthing, went ashore, leaving Bicker, who prided himself upon his mathematical faculty, to wrestle with the problems of the Customs manifest. I myself had handed over trench stores; this looked a worse job, and there were the familiar dilemmas of one thing with different names.
The ship was not here, it soon showed, to take her time. Loading began after dinner. A leather band or rather gutter working on rollers was lifted out from the wharf over each of several holds, and a spout fixed at its extremity; the gang in charge spread sacking under the feeding band and directed the spout as they wished. Then the machinery behind began to drone, and the grain, like a gliding brook, to travel along the leather band; whence, at the overturn, it leapt into the spout which directed its descent into the hold, while a sort of idle snowstorm of chaff and draff glistened thick in the sunlight. Many heads looked over the rails to see this process at first, but there was a sameness about it and the heads quickly found other occupation. Presently I went to look at the activities behind the scenes, where a gang was taking bags of grain from a railway truck and emptying them through a grating into another travelling conduit, which duly under the flooring of the building bore the wheat to the automatic machines. There, it seemed to my inept wish to learn, it was amassed until a certain weight was registered, and that point reached the heap was flung forward into the feeder which ran up to the spout over our hold. Before the yellow current arrived there, it had been sampled at intervals by a boy who squatted beside, dipping a horn-shaped can on the end of a stick into it, and filling thereby small labelled sacks convenient to him.
The Brazilian steamer ahead of us was receiving the grain in bags, which looked oddly like pigs asleep as they were hurried along the endless band. On this steamer, the Caxambu, real live pigs and sheep were routing about over the forecastle. I was told that she was an ex-German. Anyway, though in déshabille, she was a handsome ship. Her bell was the most resonant; the Bonadventure’s was known still more surely for a thin tinkler when that gong rang.
For the settlement beyond, it was not conspicuous. The spires of Bahia Blanca showed up white some few miles inland; the nearer scene was one of tin roofs, of railway coaches and wagons, small muddy decks and mud flats. Naturally the steward was fishing. But nothing was biting. He stood pensively gazing into heaven, even holding the line listlessly, when the third mate having collected a good attendance crept up behind him as quiet as a cat and jerked the line with the hungry violence of a monster, contriving also to make his retreat out of sight before the aged angler had quite decided that he was not going to catch a huge bass. This heartless deception was very popular. Something was necessary to while away the evening despite its bright array of dewy-lighted clouds, which suited the coolness of the air. The grumble of the machinery gave place to “Cock Robin” and other classic opportunities for bawling; and cards were brought out.
The next day, cold enough for every one, and proving that the English climate is not alone in its uncertain habits, went on quietly. The party who brought the sacks of grain to the door of the railway truck, the man who there at singular speed cut away the string from the mouths of the sacks, the lads who swept all loose grain from the truck and its neighbourhood–all were working to load us as if their lives depended on it. Actually, no doubt, this was the case. The Bonadventure ceased to tower aloft out of the water.
Bicker, Mead and the passenger-purser passed the evening in the village. We went in and out of shops in a casual manner. There was one whose contents were sufficiently varied for the sailors’ fancy. On one wall hung a large collection of crudely cured pelts, the fur of wild cats, foxes, and other animals. From the ceiling hung, unpitied, many canaries imprisoned in yellow cages; under the counters were displayed baskets made of turtle shells, lined with pink sateen. Cigarettes of all nationalities, boot polishes of uncertain price and utility, and in the window a regiment of notes and coins advertising the money-changer’s department, caught my eye. There were even old books. As we were leaving two sailors entered bearing a cage wrapped in paper. They accosted the fat and greasy shopkeeper abruptly.
“Canary eh? died ’smornin’ eh?”
(This “eh?” was the mainstay of our Anglo-Argentine intercourse.)
“Ah, Ah, no give monjay!”