But the outward-bounder, his hands thrust deep into empty pockets, the bitter taste of begrudged bread parching his mouth, and the scowling face of his boarding master refusing to pass from his mind’s eye; he it is who feels the utter desolation of the crowded “chain-locker” corrode his very soul. After a long day’s tramp around the docks, sneaking on board vessels like a thief, and asking the mate for a “chance” with bated breath, as if begging for pence, unsuccessful and weary, he returns to this walled-in pit of gloom, and jealously eyes the company of miserables like himself, as if in each one he saw a potential snatcher of his last hope of a berth.
Outward-bounders have little to say to each other in the “chain-locker.” They wait, not like honest labourers seeking legitimate employment, but like half-tried prisoners awaiting sentence. This characteristic is so universal that, although we who bided the coming of the Gareth’s skipper had all got our discharges in, and so felt reasonably sure of her, we had not exchanged half a dozen words among the fourteen of us.
But there suddenly appeared in our midst a square-built, rugged-faced man of middle height, whose grey eyes twinkled across his ruined nose, and whose mouth had that droll droop of the lower lip that shows a readiness, not only to laugh in and out of season, but almost pathetically invites the beholder to laugh too. He it was who broke the stony silence by saying in the richest brogue, “Is it all av us bhoys that does be goin’ in the wan ship, I wondher?” Even the most morose among us felt an inclination to smile, we hardly knew why, but just then the swing door of the engaging office burst open, and a hoarse voice shouted, “Crew o’ the Gareth here.”
The words, like some irresistible centripetal force, sucked in from the remotest corner of the large area every man, and in a moment all of us, who had, as we thought, secured our chances by lodging our discharges beforehand, were seized with something of a panic lest we should lose the ship after all. Heavens! how we thrust and tore our way into the office, past the burly policeman who held every one of us at the pinch of the door until he was satisfied of our right to enter. Once within, we felt safe, and stood nervously fingering our caps while the clerk gabbled over the usual formula, to which none of us gave the slightest heed. “Signing on” began and proceeded apace, to the accompaniment of a running fire of questions as to age, nationality, last ship, etc., to which answers, if not promptly forthcoming, were, I am afraid, supplied by the questioner. There was a subdued chuckle, and the man who had spoken outside stood at the counter.
“What name?” snapped the clerk.
“Alphonso M’Ginty, yer anner,” was the answer. No exquisite witticism ever raised a more wholesome burst of laughter. It positively brightened that dull hole like a ray of sea-sunshine.
“How old?” said the clerk, in a voice still tremulous.
“God befrind me, I forgot! Say tirty-five, sor.”
“Your discharge says twenty-five?” returned the clerk.
“Ah yes, yer anner, but it’s said that for the last tirty years!”