My seafarer was in a great stew. To sit there and watch him was to warm up to him. There he was, a man who regularly faced death by more ways than one at sea, but now in deep fear that this shore-going flunky would catch him smoking a surreptitious cigarette. He stared determinedly at every place except at his hat until the doorkeeper had passed on.
When he looked at his hat the cigarette had burned a hole in it. He viewed the hat sadly. "No gainsayin' it, war is 'ell, ain't it? I paid fourteen bob for that 'at three days back in Cardiff."
I went out to help him buy a new hat. Hat stores were scarce, but life does not end with hat stores; there were fleets of little places where a man could sit down and talk about more important things than hats.
In the hotel smoke-room after lunch there was no sugar for our coffee. His sea-training began to show at once. "The thing you 'ave to learn to do at sea is to go on your own. Nobody doing much for a chap that 'e don't do for hisself, is there?" From his coat pocket he drew an envelope which once held a letter from home—in place of the letter now was sugar. "Preparedness—'ere it is"—and sweetened our coffee from the envelope.
He spoke of his life at sea. "I can't say that I like it—I can't say I don't like it—but it was my life before the war and it 'as to be since. You've seen my ship, 'aven't you, lying to moorings? Nothing great to look at, is she? but the managing director of our company—he has the 'andling of maybe a 'undred more like her—'Let 'em 'ave their grand passenger ships,' 'e says, 'but give me my cargo boats that pays for theirselves every two voyages.' The right idea 'e 'ad, I'll say for 'im. And for my part of it there is no everlastin' polishin' o' brahss and painting o' white work and no buying o' gold-laced uniforms at your own cost. And there's the bonus for me. Oh, aye! A bit of bonus ain't a bit of 'arm, you know, especially when you've a wife that's no eyesore to look at, and little kiddies growin' up.
"Torpedoed? Oh, aye. It's not to be expected of a man to escape that these days. My chum Bob, remember 'im—that was seven hours to Alexandria and back—with a rose in his coat? His fourth time torpedoed, that was. I've been blowed up only three times myself. Nothing much of anything special, the last time and the time before that—a matter of getting into boats and by and by being picked up—no more than that—no. But the first time—maybe it was a novelty-like then. 'Owever, I'd carried a load of coal to Naples and getting twenty-two pounds a ton for coal that cost two pound ten in Cardiff maybe makes it a bit clearer what the managing director 'ad in mind when 'e said: 'let 'em have their grand passenger ships, but give me my little cargo boats.'
"From Naples I go on to Piræus in Greece, and we take a load on there—admiralty stuff, and not to be spoken of—and we put out for 'ome. She was a good old single-crew, this one o' mine. Twenty-five year old—not the worst, though I'd seen better. Well warmed up she could squeeze out eight knots, or maybe eight and a 'alf. I 'ung close to the land along that Greek shore, for if anything should 'appen ther's no sense 'aving too long a row to the beach in boats.
"Very good. We're rollin' along one morning when the radio man came in with a message which read: 'PUT INTO NEAREST PORT. U-BOATS.'
"And without ado we puts into a little place down at the 'eel of Italy, and that night I 'ad a 'ot barth an' a lovely long sleep in my brahss bed which the missus 'ad given me for Christmas the last time 'ome. And a great pleasure it was, I say.
"Next mornin' we put to sea again, and next day after comes another radio, and it says: 'PUT INTO NEAREST PORT. U-BOATS.' And we put into Malta, and that night again I 'ad another 'ot barth and a fine sleep in my brahss bed.