The Master; a Novel

by Israel Zangwill

And so one fine evening Matt set sail for the city of culture and “Crœsuses.” Everything seemed of good augury. Though the expense of the trip had wellnigh eaten up his savings, his heart was as light as his pocket. He was going only to the States, but he felt that, in quitting his native soil, the voyage to London, the temple of Art, and to his uncle, its high-priest, had begun. The moon shone over the twinkling harbor like a great gold coin, and as the vessel spread its canvas wings and glided out of the confusion of shipping, Matt felt that its name was not the least happy omen in this auspicious moment. The ship was named The Enterprise.

That night, finding some confusion about the distribution of bunks, Matt lay down on deck, with Artistic Anatomy and Practical House Decoration for his pillows, and slept the sleep of the weary, tempered by a farrago of inconsequent dreams.

When he woke up next morning he rubbed his eyes from more than sleepiness. Halifax seemed still to confront his vision—its hills, its forts, its wharves, George Island, the Point, and the great harbor in which The Enterprise rocked gently. What was this hallucination?

He soon discovered that it was reality. There had been a head-wind in the night, and the ship had dropped her anchor in the harbor for safety.

The incident was typical. In the course of the voyage Matt learned to know the captain—a grizzled old sea-dog with the heart of a bitch. The ship was his own, and he sailed it himself to save expense and check dishonesty. There is a proverb about saving a pennyworth of tar, and Captain Bludgeon illustrated it. No man was ever so unfitted to walk the quarter-deck. His idea of navigation was to hug the coast, and he seized every pretext for putting in at creeks or ports and anchoring for the night, when the crew would go ashore and come back incapable. The schooner itself was an old tub, a cumbrous, dingey-like craft, but sound in timber. Matt had a rough time, though the reading of the Arabian Nights made the voyage enchanted. The passengers were a plebeian crowd—a score of women, mostly servant-girls and single, fifteen men emigrating to the States, and a few children. There were only six bunks. The mate had given up his state-room—which Matt was to have shared—to some of the women. Those who could not secure bunks herded dressed in a big field bed, which also accommodated some of the men, likewise sleeping in their clothes. For toilet operations all the women resorted to the state-room, which held a mirror and washing apparatus. Etiquette was free-and-easy. The food was horrible, the cook’s menus being almost ingenious in their unpalatableness. Fortunately most of the passengers were sick already. Matt had no immunity. All the pangs of his first pipe were repeated, without the moral qualms which rationalized those. He continued to sleep on deck as often as he could, making friends with the stars; when the night was too chilly he couched on the wood-pile near the stove. Thus was he spared licentious spectacles, and his innocence was granted a little longer term. They passed the signals and flag-staff of Sable Point safely, Captain Bludgeon’s face as white as the breakers that girdled its barren rock; then, instead of making a bee-line for Boston, the captain fetched a semicircle, following the New England coast line, and holding on to the apron-strings of his mother earth. Such voyaging he conceived to be sure, if slow; mistakenly enough, considering the iron-bound character of the coast.

The passengers—once they had got over their sickness—did not complain, for they had the leisure of poverty, and the prospect of indefinite board and lodging was not unpleasing, and their frequent stopping-places diversified the monotony of the voyage with little excursions. One night, having been driven into harbor by a capful of wind, they witnessed the torch-light fishing. It was a scene that set Matt’s fingers itching for the brush—waving torches glittering on the water from dozens of boats, and lighting up the tanned faces of the fishers, who were scooping up the herrings with nets. Every detail gave him the keenest joy—the wavering refractions in the water, the leaping silver of the fish touched with gold flame, the sombre mystery of sea and sky above and around. The night was made even more memorable, for some of the girls who had landed brought back in giggling triumph many bundles of cured herrings, which they had pilfered from an unguarded smoke-house, and these they generously distributed, so that the whole ship supped deliciously in defiance of the cook.

On another occasion—in the afternoon at high-water—Matt and about a score of the passengers, the majority females, went on shore to pick gray-beards, as they called the gray cranberries that grew in the swamps. And they tarried so long that when they came back to the boat they found the tide turned, and two hundred yards of mud between them and the water. One of the men tried the mud, and sank to the knees in slimy batter. In the end there was nothing for it but to launch the empty boat, and then wade to it. The launching was easy, the boat slipping along as on grease, but the sequel was boisterous. Jack Floss, a strapping Anglo-Saxon with a blond mustache and a devil-may-care humor, set the example of giving a woman a pick-a-back to save her skirts, and the few other men followed suit, returning again and again for fresh freight. The air resounded with hysterical giggling and screaming as the women frantically clutched their bearers, some of whom extorted unreluctant kisses under jocose threats of tumbling their burdens over into the mud. One or two actually carried out their threats, by involuntarily stepping suddenly into a gutter worn by the rains and sinking up to the waist, but the mishaps abated no jot of the madcap merriment—it rather augmented the rowdiness as the women were hauled from their mud-baths. For his part Matt waded warily, more conscious of the responsibility than of the fun, for he was doing his duty manfully, as became a lad stout, sturdy, and sixteen. His second burden was a slim, pretty servant-girl named Priscilla, and when he was depositing her, speckless, in the boat, she took the opportunity of the embrace to kiss him in hearty gratitude. Matt dropped her like a hot coal. He felt scorched and flustered, and had a bewildered moment of burning blushes ere he ploughed his way back to rescue another of the distressed damsels. That sudden kiss was an epoch in his growth. A discomfort at the time, the after-taste of it lent new warmth to his interest in the royal amours of the Arabian Nights. In his dreams he bore delectable Eastern princesses across perilous magic marshes, and their gratitude found him stockish no longer.

The next episode in this curious creeping voyage was superficially more critical for Matt. A sudden gale upset all poor Captain Bludgeon’s calculations. He was near shore as usual, and tried to beat into harbor almost under bare poles; but the haven was of a dangerous entrance, narrow and choked in the throat by a rock, and no one on board had sufficient seamanship to get the schooner in. The mate advised abandoning the hope of harbor, and setting the jib and the jib-foresail to make leeway. The captain swore by everything unholy he would not go a cable farther out to sea. The night was closing in, but, the wind dying away, The Enterprise anchored outside the harbor. But in the night the wind sprang up from the opposite quarter fiercer than ever, and the vessel dragged her anchors and drove towards the rock that squatted on guard at the mouth of the harbor, pitching helplessly in the shifting troughs. In the inky blackness great swamping waves carried off her boats, her top-sails, and both houses. Her anchors were left behind her, and part of the bulwarks was likewise torn away. Fortunately her cables held out as she drove bumping along, though they did not moderate her pace sufficiently to prevent her keel being partially torn away when she bumped upon a reef. Yet she jolted over the reef and drifted blindly on and on, none knew whither.

Within the schooner the scene was almost as wild as without. The women’s screams rivalled those of the wind; the distracted creatures ran up and down the companion-ladder, getting in the way of the crew; the captain went below to quiet them—and did not return. Apparently he preferred the society of his own sex. The mate, thus left in command, boarded up the companion-way to stop the aimless scurrying, and told off some of the crew to help him unload the cargo, which consisted of plaster, and to pitch it overboard. Matt and the cook bore a hand in the work. Not daring to unhatch for fear of being water-logged, they had to pass the plaster through the lazaret.

Jack Floss did his best to comfort the females by profanities. He laughed, and hoped the Lord would damn the old hulk, whose fleas were big enough to swim ashore on. His cool blasphemies calmed some, but others plainly regarded him as a Jonah. Matt was half perturbed, half fascinated by this unconventional vagabond; of the real danger his own buoyancy made light.