A motor-boat came bringing the stores, and, to the disgust of the cook and other watchers, a great stack of long loaves, altogether leathery in external appearance. Most of these were returned. The ship’s chandler must have thought we were arriving in force. Our own boat was tied at the foot of the gangway, and the apprentices told off as ferrymen for the time being.
Next day the larks were aloft again, and their melody, marvellous after long absence from it, came dropping from heaven as undiminished, one would say, as raindrops falling. So clear it sounded there even when they were in the clouds. Meanwhile the bosun and party were getting the winches and derricks into trim, with less silver voices: “H-h-hup, H-h-hup: Let go a little: Here, youse....”
It was not unwelcome when the evening came, and Mead, Bicker, and their friend so soon to be returned to duty set out up the cobbled road to Emden; most bitter was the east wind blowing down the long colonnades of trees, and we hastened into the sheltering streets of the little town. We found it a quiet and beautiful place of ornamentation, and gables and high houses, with a canal in the midst. Masterly seemed its spire, stretching up into the sky with unexpected height and charming ease. It was Easter Monday, and many folks were walking out–we looked curiously about us, and while none were anything but tidy and decent, none had any of the symptoms of much and to spare. They were evidently poor, but far from poor in spirit.
We were puzzled by the Sabbath look of things to find a place to sit down and apply some antidote to the effects of that rawish east wind. We began drifting as usual, when an old fellow in black coat and Homburg hat pushed past us, mumbling something. A light came swiftly into the eyes of Mead and Bicker; the old fellow was fragrant with good beer. We asked him for directions. He was off at once in a loud, hard voice: “By Jesus Christ and General Jackson,” he began (and da capo), “the two best men in America. You come to my house.” Following him, and coping with his repeated invocations of the Messiah and the General, and requests for an opinion of his English speech, we arrived by and by. He was an innkeeper, and (by Jesus Christ) “an old sailing man himself.”
The inn parlour was most excellently warm, free and easy. We set to with hot grog, the brimmer being rebrimmed (if my memory serves me) not once nor twice. The room was not one which depressed. Around it hung daubs of full-rigged ships of Batavia in the fifties and sixties; there was an automatic weighing machine, a most magnificent penny-in-the-slot piano, and another apparatus for extracting copper from the air, dressed up as a blue windmill, but I did not inquire what it was expected to yield. And the wall-paper was tapped with an ample border, in which one saw smooth waters, placid smacks, and more windmills.
The other occupants of the room were the quiet set at the tables, a drunken Finn seaman with one arm in bandages, a dark-haired musician, the landlord and his wife and their good-looking daughter; while from the private house other members of the family came and went at need, as will be seen.
We provided the landlord with grog. He melted with gratitude, rose, and set his horrible piano going, whose wicked hammers champed upon some of the harshest wires outside of the barbed-wire dumps. And what is more, whenever the piano began, our friend the Finn thought his hour had come to shine, and essayed a sort of stamping, stooping dance across the floor. This led to persuasion. The landlord persuaded, the landlady persuaded, unclassified assistants persuaded, and presently the dancer was pleased to be seated once more, exclaiming, “When I come aboard he says to me, he says, ‘All right, Captain, all right, all right.’” No sooner did the music begin afresh than this enthusiast would rise up relentlessly as though hypnotized (by the pæan) and perhaps stamp out a bar or two before being replaced by combined efforts. This kept on happening.
None the less, the landlord, who had apparently spent the day in liquid rejoicings, was swallowing grog and growing taleful. He claimed all sorts of sea service and seemed to know what he was talking about, posed even my expert friends with the sailing-ship question: What’s the difference in build between a Scotch ship, a Nova Scotian, and a Yankee? Boxing too was in his line: “Scholar of John L. Sullivan,” he assured us, and directed admiration to his fist, which was normal. From taleful he waxed tuneful. “I’m a chanty-man, y’know,” and wiping back his gingery-white whiskers he groaned out “Blow the man down,” and “The streams of our native Australia,” in dreadful style. After these, finding himself strangely appreciated, he offered and began “a real English song, y’know–exchoose me, y’know, if I don’t speak the plain English.” It was “The Maid of the Mill.” His rendering was a strain on our tact, and too much for one of the young ladies of the house, who was smitten with a fit of giggling most right and justifiable. At that, the old villain flew into a ridiculous passion, jumped up, and was for hitting this girl. He was restrained.
After this unwanted diversion, he returned and (with starts of rage) barked out the rest of his song. His wolfhound began, and we began, to find the vocalist a nuisance; and as the evening wore on, I thought the authentic musician, who played the violin, was beginning to resent our presence and success. The daughter of the house foolishly sat at our table. The musician, however, was soothed with an honorarium, and with much “Auf wieder-sehen!” we went. Even now, however, it was thought unseemly to reach the ship in one journey, so halts were called twice; and once aboard, the usual arguments kept us out of our beds until four or so in the morning.
The two grain-elevators in the port were still busy with a Greek steamer, so that, apart from painting, the Bonadventure was idle, and there was little to do but row over to the canteens and return with undreamed-of quantities of chocolate and cigarettes. Cigars were, to us, as lightly bought as matches. As to the painting, it was again mysterious that two of the apprentices fell off the stage on which they were working alongside; they were soon dressed in borrowed plumage. Suddenly in the evening our discharge began.