Confessions of a Tradesman

by Frank Thomas Bullen

In the course of the day I drifted down to the King's Arms again, but saw nothing of my friend. So towards evening, I made bold to ask Sam if he had seen him, and received the reply that he had sailed that morning in a schooner for Spain. I have never seen him since, but I have not been able to forget him.

One never-failing source of amusement I had during this long weary time, for even if hungry and cold young things will try to play, was in the Tower of London, into which I often dodged past the guards. I was often caught and driven back, but that only whetted my appetite for getting in. In my numerous visits I explored many portions of the old building that visitors never see, and I had many a good meal given me by the kind-hearted mess-cooks of the garrison. And by stealthily joining myself on to parties of visitors, I went the rounds of all the showplaces, into which entrance in those days could only be had by payment, and was mightily amused at hearing the same old story told with hardly an altered word by the "beef-eaters."

I have mentioned this particularly, because opportunities for play in that stern and dingy quarter of London were very few, and when I got out of Thames Street for a brief space into the cloister-like atmosphere of the Tower, I really did feel as if I was in another world, and I never quite got rid of that eerie feeling when I was alone in some unfrequented corner, that I was moving among a crowd of ghosts, who in the past had suffered and died within those grim walls. One night I found myself belated in the horse armoury, and as I could not find my way out, and dared not call, for that I knew I had no business there, I curled myself up in a snug corner and went to sleep, awaking in the morning with the sun streaming into my eyes, and with a firm determination to run no such risk again. I got in there by climbing over a big gate with a cheval-de-frise on the top, and I got out the same way without being observed. I suppose if I had been caught my punishment would have been something mediæval, for the crime was, to say the least of it, unusual.

And now the grim fact began to thrust itself upon me without possibility of mistake that it was hopeless ever to expect to get a ship by doing as I was doing. The vessels that got their crews in this way were all pitifully undermanned, and consequently whoever was chosen for employment in one of them must of necessity be strong and inured to hard work. Indeed, this choice was carried so far, that the skippers invariably felt the hands of the candidates, and if they were not calloused like the skin of a yam, the defect was fatal, supposing that there was any competition. My hands were only felt once, and that more I suspect as a matter of form, for nothing came of it.

At last I asked Sam timidly if he really thought I stood any chance of getting a ship there. He looked down at me as if he had just seen me for the first time, pondered a moment (but about nothing I am sure), then suddenly remembering my question, said, "Oh no, not till you've a-growed a bit. You better stow-away." I said, "Thank you, sir," and moved off fully determined, whatever happened, not to stow-away. Going to sea, I thought, was bad enough in any case, but from what I had heard stowaways stood a good chance of getting first a good hammering, then a tremendous lot of hard work, and very little food, and prison at the journey's end. It was a programme that did not appeal to me.

Nevertheless, it was with a sinking heart that I turned away from Thames Street that night. I felt that I could not hold my own in the rough and tumble life of the streets much longer, and I craved with all my heart and soul for a master. I know that there are boys who, even in good homes, have the nomad instinct so strongly implanted that they cannot be contented anywhere, will endure, nay, embrace voluntarily all kinds of privation, so long as they may vagabondise, but I was not one of them. My early training was all against it. I longed for a home, and to have some one in authority over me, although I could not help admitting to myself that I had not made the best of my chances, such as they were.

But as the darkest hour is just before the dawn according to the adage, so when my prospects of getting to sea were at what appeared to be the lowest ebb, I suddenly bethought me of the possibility of finding my uncle, whom I have before alluded to as being master of a ship. More by accident than design, I discovered him, and although he was evidently not overjoyed to see me he agreed to take me to sea with him at the wage of five shillings per month.

Of my early experiences at sea, I have told at length in the "Log of a Sea Waif," and therefore I cannot repeat them here. I can only point out that there seemed to be a fatality about the matter, something working against my becoming a seafarer, since I was shipwrecked on my first voyage and landed in Havana, where, because of the old trouble, my puny size, I could not get a ship, and consequently I returned to one of my old employments, namely, that of billiard-marker. It was at the Hotel St Isabel in the Plaza de Armas, and here for some months I led a very happy if entirely demoralising life for one so young. I received no wages, but the best of food and lodging, and the tips given me by the frequenters of the billiard-room were so many that I always had plenty of money.

But strangely enough, although I certainly ought to have known the value of money from my previous training, now being provided liberally with all I needed, I made no attempt to save, but distributed my wealth among the sailors at the port, with whom I always forgathered when not on duty. Thus it came about that when I was one day taken charge of by the Consul again, and after he had scolded and threatened me for some time, because, as he said, I had dared to remove myself from his care without his permission, I was entirely penniless.

He put me on board a vessel bound for home via Mobile, Alabama, and when I reached Liverpool I was not merely penniless, I was almost naked, and it was winter. I had no claim upon anybody for wages, no knowledge of where to go, and I felt as if the fates had indeed been unkind to me. But I found a good Samaritan in the guise of a poor woman, who kept a small eating-house, and she took me in and allowed me to work for my keep. And thus I added one more to my smattering of trades, that of waiter; the maid-of-all-work part I was very well versed in. It was all the kinder of her, because the business was hardly substantial enough to support even the slight additional burden which I placed upon it. Our principal trade was with the poverty-stricken dock-labourers, whose orders were usually for a basin of broth at a penny and a ha'porth of bread, except when flush, they were able to treat themselves to a twopenny plate of potato-pie. Everybody seemed to be bitterly poor, and it was little wonder to me that when a sailor just paid off did happen to come in and show the gleam of gold, eyes grew wolfish and fingers involuntary crooked themselves.