'We was in a rotten old steamer, sir, them and me. Jack was my elder, and a fine big chap, good as gold, and as brave and strong as a lion; a real seaman, such as one don't meet nowadays. He mostly sailed in windjammers, but he was one of those that like to see things, and he had a fancy to potter round the Mediterranean once in a way. He'd read a lot at sea one passage in a Green's ship that had a fair pile of books in her for the crowd for'ard, and he'd a fancy to see Italy and Greece. He'd talk by the hour of old Romans, and a strange character that was at Syracuse some time back; I disremember his name, but he was for science and arithmetic; and he knew the name of a score of Roman emperors quite pat; and he said once when we was at the port of Athens that a hill plain to be seen was the home of the gods in the days before Christianity came to the fore. He was a first-class man at whatever he took to, that he was, and might have been high up if he'd had a chance to be properly eddicated. And Billy, my young brother, was a fine boy of quite another guess sort. He cared for nothing but fun, and he was good-looking, and a rare youngster with his dooks. I've seen him down a Dutchman twice his weight, and do it laughing. He was bright as the day, sir, bright as sunlight, and there we was, the three of us, in this rotten old tramp, built in the year one of steamships, and much the shape and size of a biscuit-tin, and not much to her that was better material. And so we mucked about the Mediterranean looking for cargo, like the sea-tramps we was, and every time it blew a capful of wind we had to turn her nose to it and keep bobbing. For if there was any kind of a sea on the beam, she'd roll so cruel that our hearts was in our mouths. And Billy's joke was always the old sea-joke that she had rolled right over in the night, and done it so quick that no one knew it. But, I own, she put the fear of God into most of us, and some of us got that narvous, we couldn't sit quiet unless there was a flat calm, and her just joggin' on ahead like an old hay-wagon. We went down from Barcelona with some sort of truck to Constant, and there Jack did talk a lot about emperors, and he was pleased as Punch to see things, saying that history grew rank thereabouts; and he would ask the old skipper about things dead and gone thousands of years, so that the old man, never liking to own he wasn't chock-a-block with knowledge, used to fidget like one o'clock, and get that cross with dodging 'twas a game to hear him. And then we went humping up the Black Sea, and brought out wheat from Ibrail, and we got stuck down at Sulina, and lightered her clear and had a holy time, so that Jack said making history in the wheat trade was no joke. And we came out from Constant for home. But home we never got, sir, and to say the truth, I've never been home since, and never shall go. Do you know the Mediterranean, sir?'
Did I know it? Even as he talked I had been thinking of Crete on our starboard beam at night, and of Etna right ahead at dawn, and the white cities of the Straits, of lava-bound Catania, of old historic Syracuse, of the sickle-shaped harbour of Messina, of high Taormina, and the day breaking in the hollows of the grey Calabrian hills. Then smoking Stromboli, a cinder peak of the seas. And afterwards singing, roaring Naples and atmospheric Capri sunk in sweet blue air. Oh, did I know it?
'Ay, I know it.'
'We came up with Sicily, and went in by the Straits to drop some truck or another at Messina, and then out again to the north, and when we were near alongside Volcano, it was looking bad and grey and hard as it does when a levanter threatens. The sea got up, and it was short and steep and hard, sir. And for a while we battered among the islands and Volcano smoking and, I dessay, Stromboli too, but the smother of the weather was too thick to see it. And I was on the lookout, as I am now, and Jack he was relieved at the wheel as I came up on the fo'c'slehead. He laughed up at me, and said, "This top-heavy old hay-wagon will be doin' a roll directly." And just as he went below, the skipper, who was as afraid of her as he had a right to be, turned her about and put her nose into the wind. There she stayed, uneasy and sawin' with her 'ead like a swell carriage-'orse. And they just went ahead with the old scrap-engines, and stayed so, reckoning to ride the gale out. And she rode it right enough till night, and we three brothers 'ad supper and passed our jokes. And poor Billy was as bright a kid as ever—oh, I can think of things 'e said now.'
He stopped speaking for a moment and dashed his fist on the rail.
'By God, it's twenty years ago, sir,' he said choking. 'And old Volcano's smoking yet, like a giant's pipe in the dark, puff and glow, puff and glow. And that man-drowning tank we was in lies a thousand fathoms deep to the west of Volcano.'
He didn't speak for a while, and when he did his voice was calmer.
'Don't think, sir, that I'd ha' complained of the common fortunes of the sea. Men are drowned, they go overboard, silent it may be, or they drop from aloft howling awful, and in the smother of a wreck when the sea's a wild beast, it's the lot of men to go. I've seen fire at sea, sir, and death in many shapes, sudden and slow, killing and fever. But the way my brothers died—why, sir, I held their hands and couldn't save 'em, held their hands and could see their faces. Jack-all-alone, seamen say! I was Jack-all-alone, while they cried out to me!
'You can reckon, sir, that such a craft, such a rotten, shaky, scrap-heap hooker, such a thing that oughtn't to have been outside a river, wasn't over well found. And those that had the finding of 'er 'ad to make a bit of stealage. 'Alf the skippers and engineers of such takes their lives in their 'ands not for the pay, but for the bit of a make. And yet I'd not think it possible for the engineer to 'ave bin in the oil racket that came out that night. They was short of oil in Constant, and got some aboard from a rotten Levantine Greek with a Harmenian for partner, and it was bad oil enough, to be sure. But the worst was that some o' the drums was a quarter oil and the rest water. And I, being on deck after supper, caught on to what the chief engineer said to our skipper. He came up running, and went on the bridge.
'"Cap'en, most o' that oil was water, and the oil's that bad the bearin's are overwarm. Can't I stop 'er?"