Sorry and cynical symbol,
Ghastly old caricature,
We, too, must walk in thy footsteps,
We but a little endure.
Bah! since the end is so sure,
Let us out-frolic our span,
Death is a hush and a darkness—
Drink and be glad while you can.
A QUEER CHRISTMAS.
The Loafer seems to have fancied the company of seamen a great deal. At The Chequers few of the saltwater fellows fore-gathered, but when they did our Loafer was never long in picking them up. Here is one of the yarns which he heard. It is stuck in the Diary without reference to date, place of hearing, or anything else.
Joe Glenn used to say that the queerest Christmas Day he ever spent fell in 1883, the year of the great gale. In that year there was cruel trouble, and the number of folks wearing mourning that one met in Hull and Yarmouth, and the other places, was enough to make the most light-hearted man feel miserable. Black everywhere—nothing but black at every turn; and then the women's faces looked so wistful, and the children seemed so quiet, that I couldn't bear to walk the streets. The women would question any stranger that came from the quays, and they scorned to think that there was not always a chance for their men; but the dead seamen were swinging about in the ooze far down under the grey waves, and the poor souls who went gaping and gazing day after day had all their trouble for nothing.
Glenn towed out on the 20th of October, and he cried, "Good-bye, Sal; back for Christmas!" as they surged away toward Gorleston. Joe was mate of the Esperanza, and he was a very promising chap. He knew his way about the North Sea blindfold, and all he didn't know about his trade wasn't worth knowing. If you had asked him who Mr. Gladstone was he would probably have said, "I've heerd on him," but he could not have told you anything about Mr. Gladstone or any other statesman. So far as the world ashore went, Joe was as ignorant as a five-year-old child, and you would have laughed till you cried had you seen his delight when the pictures in a nursery-book were explained to him. It is hardly possible to imagine the existence of a grown man who is ignorant of things that are known to a child in the infant school; but there are many such knocking about at sea. What can you expect? They live amid the moaning desolation of that sad sea all the year round; they never used to have any schooling, and their world even now is limited by the blank horizon, with the rail of their boat for inner barrier. Glenn could very nearly read Moore's Almanac, and, as that great work was the only literature on board, he often interpreted it, and he was counted a great scholar. Then, he could actually use a sextant, and his way of working out his latitude was chaste and picturesque. Supposing he made the sun 29 deg. 18 min., and the declination for the day was 6 deg. 34 min. 22 sec., then he put down his figures this way:—
8948
2918
6300
634
5356
and when his chums saw him working out this profound calculation on the side of a bucket or on the companion hatch, they would say, "He's a wonnerful masterpiece. Yea, but he is, and nothin' but that."
Glenn was daring—but that is nothing to say, for all the fishermen seem insensible to fear. He was only once scared, and that was when he found a man leaning against the boat one pitch-dark night, just after the fishers had hauled. Joe thought the fellow was loafing, so he hit him a clout on the head, and made very uncomplimentary remarks. The victim of the assault took it very coolly, and one of the crew shouted—