“Come, come!” (He was always most emphatic.) “You’re missing it all. We’re landing.”
I thought we were leaving at once. The eye behind the monocle was premonitory of some great loss to me. I hurried on deck—to thank his artistic and managerial instinct instantly I arrived there. Before me was Fishguard and the Welsh coast, and to my dying day I shall never forget it. Imagine, if you please, a land-locked harbor, as green as grass in this semi-cloudy, semi-gold-bathed afternoon, with a half-moon of granite scarp rising sheer and clear from the green waters to the low gray clouds overhead. On its top I could see fields laid out in pretty squares or oblongs, and at the bottom of what to me appeared to be the east end of the semi-circle, was a bit of gray scruff, which was the village no doubt. On the green water were several other boats—steamers, much smaller, with red stacks, black sides, white rails and funnels—bearing a family resemblance to the one we were on. There was a long pier extending out into the water from what I took to be the village and something farther inland that looked like a low shed.
This black hotel of a ship, so vast, so graceful, now rocking gently in the enameled bay, was surrounded this hour by wheeling, squeaking gulls. I always like the squeak of a gull; it reminds me of a rusty car wheel, and, somehow, it accords with a lone, rocky coast. Here they were, their little feet coral red, their beaks jade gray, their bodies snowy white or sober gray, wheeling and crying—“my heart remembers how.” I looked at them and that old intense sensation of joy came back—the wish to fly, the wish to be young, the wish to be happy, the wish to be loved.
But, my scene, beautiful as it was, was slipping away. One of the pretty steamers I had noted lying on the water some distance away, was drawing alongside—to get mails, first, they said. There were hurrying and shuffling people on all the first cabin decks. Barfleur was forward looking after his luggage. The captain stood on the bridge in his great gold-braided blue overcoat. There were mail chutes being lowered from our giant vessel’s side, and bags and trunks and boxes and bales were then sent scuttling down. I saw dozens of uniformed men and scores of ununiformed laborers briskly handling these in the sunshine. My fellow passengers in their last hurrying hour interested me, for I knew I should see them no more; except one or two, perhaps.
While we were standing here I turned to watch an Englishman, tall, assured, stalky, stary. He had been soldiering about for some time, examining this, that and the other in his critical, dogmatic British way. He had leaned over the side and inspected the approaching lighters, he had stared critically and unpoetically at the gulls which were here now by hundreds, he had observed the landing toilet of the ladies, the material equipment of the various men, and was quite evidently satisfied that he himself was perfect, complete. He was aloof, chilly, decidedly forbidding and judicial.
Finally a cabin steward came hurrying out to him.
“Did you mean to leave the things you left in your room unpacked?” he asked. The Englishman started, stiffened, stared. I never saw a self-sufficient man so completely shaken out of his poise.
“Things in my room unpacked?” he echoed. “What room are you talking about? My word!”
“There are three drawers full of things in there, sir, unpacked, and they’re waiting for your luggage now, sir!”
“My word!” he repeated, grieved, angered, perplexed. “My word! I’m sure I packed everything. Three drawers full! My word!” He bustled off stiffly. The attendant hastened cheerfully after. It almost gave me a chill as I thought of his problem. And they hurry so at Fishguard. He was well paid out, as the English say, for being so stalky and superior.