Summer is the most propitious season for the bummer. When spring comes in earnest and navigation commences he changes venue from the inhospitable market square and its surroundings, and seeks the busy Esplanade with its outlying wharves where he, although not belonging to any organized stevedores gang, picks up a good many jobs in helping to load and unload vessels of all kinds, when he may be said to revel in comparative wealth, though his outward man is, as to dress, unchanged, for he, like many other philosophers, treats with scorn the vanity of dress.
CHAPTER XVII.
A VAG BY CHOICE.
A good many of these unappointed attaches of the stevedores have once been sailors and still have a hankering for the water side. A few days ago I met a good specimen of this class, who, although dressed in a dilapidated suit of “hodden gray,” had the unmistakeable look of the sailor about him which needed not the “foul anchor” tattooed on the back of his right hand, nor the mermaid and other devices on his arms to confirm. I managed after a time to get into conversation with him, but the man seemed reticent, not to say surly. When I asked him if he had ever been to sea he replied, “Go to blazes and find out.” I then told him that I meant no impertinence or harm by the question. I told him that I had a son now at sea, and consequently I took an interest in everything in the maritime line. To keep up the unities I took a plug of tobacco with which I had supplied myself with a view to just such an emergency, and offered the ancient mariner a chew, which he accepted and began to look a little more pleasant, and showed some signs of loquacity. I then proposed that we should go and have a glass of grog, a proposition which appeared to strike him as being correct. So we went to a water-side tavern sitting room where we each took what seamen call a throat season. I then suggested that we should have a smoke, to which the ex-mariner agreed, and another “throat season,” which proposal also met his views. By this time my quondam friend began to wax merry, and went so far as to volunteer to sing a favorite song of his entitled “The Cumberland’s Crew,” a lyric based on the sinking of the United States war ship Cumberland by the improvised Confederate ironclad Merrimac at Hampton Roads during the Yankee “rebellion.” I told him that, glad as I would be to listen to the heroic verse, yet it being rather early in the day to burst into song, I would much prefer to hear him tell me some of his doubtless many adventures that he had met with at sea. My ancient mariner at this stage of the seance began to get lachrymose, even unto the verge of tears.
“I don’t like to speak or think of my past life,” said he, “but if I tell you anything I may as well tell you all.”
“Do so,” said I. “I know it will be interesting,” so I ordered some more grog and sat down again comfortably to listen to the story of the sailor tramp.
My partner drank his grog, laid down his pipe, took a huge chew of tobacco, and commenced his yarn. “I am neither a sailor or a sojer now. I am
NOTHING BUT A TRAMP,
although, by rights, I ought to be a gentleman. You needn’t smile. I only said I ought to be one, but I am not. Yes, my father was a clergyman in the west of England. I won’t exactly say where. However, he was rector of the parish, and I was his eldest son, and consequently the hope of his house. I had a younger brother who, I suppose, is at home doing well, at least he was when I last heard from him, but that’s a good many years ago. Well, I may safely say that in all the west, east, north, or south of England, or, for the matter of that, any other country, there never grew up a more mischievous or incorrigible boy than I was. From the time I was first put in trousers until I got the bounce for good from my reverend father, I did nothing that I could help but rob birds’ nests, upset bee-hives, and abet poachers and other bad characters in the neighborhood. I ran away and stayed with a gang of gipsies for six months, and the vagabond proclivities of my nature were remarkably well developed, as you can readily understand, in their company. A slight flirtation with a young woman, the particulars of which I need not mention, occasioned my hasty departure from the tribe, and I returned home a prodigal son indeed. I was then sent to Eton, where I attained a smattering of classics and mathematics, but as I unfortunately took the liberty of putting a quantity of cobbler’s wax in one of the tutor’s boots, and was convicted of divers other peccadilloes of like nature, I got my conge from my alma mater, and returned home again. My father, good man, got out of all patience with me, for my language was occasionally of the vilest, and I swore like our army in Flanders at the servants on all possible occasions. I was given a £50 note with a request that I would go forth and seek my fortune, which I did in London, but didn’t find it. I spent all my money, and as a last resource shipped as boy on a drogher bound to Newcastle for coals. I was just turned sixteen then, and bitterly did I curse the day I tried the sea for a living. I was ropes ended by the skipper, thrashed by the mate, and kicked and cuffed by all the crew. This didn’t suit me at all, so I stole the boat one night when I was on anchor watch, and sculled myself ashore, letting the boat go adrift when I landed, and tramped my way to Liverpool. I shipped as boy again on a Packet ship for New York, and on the passage I got it lively from all hands, they leading me the life of a dog. Well, we were all discharged in New York, and I shipped again, this time for Marseilles as ordinary seaman.