The back-door of the Alexandra, which opens on the Gut, is my home comedy. It is strangely fascinating; sad in a way, but very human; for nothing on earth, except one or two of the very great things of life, is so democratic as the back-door of a public house. Soon after breakfast, or even before, the tradesmen sneak round for their pick-me-ups. Then the housewives go for their jugs of ale and stout. Some people never enter the Alexandra except by the back way. They march down the Gut as if on important business; then, in the twinkling of an eye, they are gone within. One worn little woman, who wears a loose cape and a squalid sailor hat, walks up and down the Gut till it is completely clear, then jumps into the door, and closes it very quietly. When she comes out again it is as a rabbit comes from a bolt-hole when a ferret is just behind. She runs five yards, stands still, looks up and down, and tries very hard to walk home unconcernedly. Sunday evenings, she hangs about outside until the bar is opened. With the turn of the key, in she goes. Once a servant, gossiping with her sailorman, kept the little woman outside for fully ten minutes after the lock was shot back. Poor little woman, how great her craving must be!
Last week, I saw a policeman standing at the top of the Gut. Up he looked; down he looked; Seacombe was orderly. Stepping as if to arrest a malefactor, he marched down the Gut.... Where was the policeman? A battered billycock and a rakish pipe looked round the corner, then withdrew. The battered billycock knew where the policeman was. The price of a glass, and billycock would have been there too.
I was glad; for a few days before that the same policeman had arrested a man by flinging him halfway across the street into the mud. It was only a tramp. His witnesses, being poor people, dared not volunteer to give evidence on his behalf, and would not have been believed had they done so. He was sentenced to fourteen days: drunk and incapable, abusive moreover. A drunkard cannot legally be arrested unless he is also incapable or disorderly. It used to be a trick of the police to shadow a harmless Weary Willie until he happened to stumble, or even to butt him down themselves. He then becomes drunk and incapable within the meaning of the act, for, if the magistrate should doubt, is there not dirt on his clothes? Obviously, circumstantially, he was incapable. He, of course, must be a poor man. The trick is not safe with tradesmen. These things are commonplaces amongst the poor.
But billycock hat will not forget!
28
MACKEREL DRIFTING
Yesterday morning early there was a great excitement along the beach. Drift-boats could be seen in the offing. "I tell thee what 'tis," they said, "the whiting be in an' us chaps an't been out to look for 'em. Us don't du nort nowadays like us used tu." Later on, however, we heard that the Plymouth drifters had been out after an autumn shoal of mackerel, had caught some thousands and had made good prices. The season for mackerel drifting here usually ends with July or August, but good October mackerel, mixed with herring, have occasionally been caught. Tony, John and myself decided to put to sea. When the other boats saw our fleet of nets being hauled aboard (in a furious hurry), they fitted out too.
We shoved off just before dark. The wind was strongish WSW.—off land, that is—so that inshore the sea was almost calm, except for the swell running in from outside. What it was like outside the white horses and the wind-streaks showed. Hardly had we gone half a mile before we heard the queer clutching noise which meant that a strong puff of wind had compelled Tony to let the sheet fly. The squall past, he hauled it in again, put his legs across the stern and hung on. We sailed eight miles from land in ten minutes under the hour—speed, that, for a twenty-two-foot open boat with its mainsail reefed! Where we downhauled to shoot the nets, the sea, unsheltered by cliffs and headlands, was—as Tony beautifully put it—'rising all up in heaps.' Whilst I was trying to keep the boat before the wind, for net-shooting, a great comber plopped over the stern right upon my back. The sky was weird. Great wind-drifts of rain-cloud constantly spread out from the west, and wolves, higher up in the sky, were driving across the moon. We heated tea, but did not try to sleep. Tony and John kept up a curious dialogue. "What do 'ee think o' it, then?"
"'Tisn't vitty. I said so all along."
HAULING INBOARD