Edmund Blunden

“ To our left, a channel lies under giant steel bridges. Our course is not there: we are piloted towards a dock for passenger and cargo ships, and entering it in a hot glare, and colouring that almost sears, of sky and water and paint, we make our berth, wallowing once over the water’s breadth to the anger of lesser navigators, who go by in their boats bawling at the bridge in general. The handsome passenger boats with their great paddle-wheels and their red awnings lie opposite our plebeian resting-place: beside a grimy wharf, where small cranes and coal carts seem to multiply. ”

“ Bicker and Mead, as they supervised the trimming of hatches that had been filled, wore a melancholy look, nor was the entry at breakfast of two young men from the Customs, though pleasant acquaintances, considered a relief. If clouds disappeared, and left the day like a furnace, there was every facility for doing nothing at all. Even at evening the cabins were filled with tepid air and flies: and most of us might be found leaning over the rails in silence, watching sunset’s orange red colour to the prime and die away again in the sky and the water below it, scarcely marked with a ripple ”

“ The spectacle of King Arthur in his bronze near the exit, in his bronze but somehow devoid of his grandeur, ended our artistic adventures. The business of criticism, no doubt, is to keep cool: but this we had scarcely been able to do. I should have given up early, but for the determination of Hosea; and even he began to feel the scorching heat above the æsthetic calm.
The ship’s football was brought out in the evening, and on a patch of waste ground alongside, flanked by thickets of rank weed, and ankle-deep in sand and coal-dust, we enjoyed ourselves most strenuously. ”

“ I felt that we might even miss the lively sight of the passenger boats coming and going, and all their gilded press of friends and acquaintances about the landing-places; their tiers of bright lamps at night rounding the bend between us and the Roads. Perhaps the youths would no longer come by with their ship’s stores of macaroni, their jars of wine and panniers of onions and other vegetables; nor the lighters, with their crews glaring in unwashed and 105 unchallenged independence in the whole world’s face, and their yellow mongrels scampering up and down the decks. ”

“ The second elevator arrived, and, like some great iron insect with many beaks, began to swallow up the grain from the holds aft. The ship shook with the speed and power of the pumping machinery; the long lighters with their great round-table steering wheels filled up, battened down, and swung away. In one of the holds there were the bags put in at Ingeniero White; under them again lay the yellow grain in mass. The elevator’s proboscis dipped into that grain, while the trimmers unstowed, slit and emptied the sacks; so the ship began to lighten, and her bow already stood high out of the water. ”

“ Short seas running and a squally wind abeam made the light ship jerk and roll. The early sun was hidden in the dull purple of a racing sleet-cloud, which passed over the Bonadventure and swept on to lash the dunes of Holland lying dim blue along the yellow horizon. The engines beat out a cheerful tattoo and sent the ship, wobbling as she went, at eleven knots through the green water. The wind grew westerly but not sisterly ”

“ There was not much comment, except upon the rain; the good thing about the damp cloudy weather was that we were spared the more furious heat, though the atmosphere had been oily and sultry. With the steamy clouds swarming about us I could picture a past life hereabouts which might justly have aroused man’s wrath; the sailing days, when to take advantage of whatever brief breeze might visit the sleepy doldrums, the sailors had to be constantly running aloft in the drenching mist, and afterwards lay down in their sweating glory-holes, in their soaked clothes, week after week. ”

“ In a few moments the storm was at its height, the sea shrouded in a thick deluge almost to the ship’s side, and its waves beaten down by the rain into pallid foam-veined inertia. An ashen grey light was about us, but the clouds of rain veiled the poop from one’s eyes amidships, and the siren trumpeted out its warnings; while sheet-like lightning flamed through the vapours, and bursts of deeper thunder than I had ever heard followed hard upon them. ”

“ Then at night, the dock’s aboriginal mosquitoes came forth; as the mate said, like a German band, all the most agonizing shades of musical audacity emanating from them. They drove not only me but old hands out on deck at night, where a chilly autumn wind was blowing, which drove us indoors again. But as the light grew, our tormentors lessened. The sun ariseth, and they get them away together, and lay them down in their dens. ”

“ Astern lay Monte Video with its lines of lights, and from its hill one great light glowed out momently; ahead lay the buoys of the channel, flashing first red and then white in reassuring alternation along our course; and the moon overhead, pale with a stratum of thin cloud, or lost at times behind echelons of stormier vapours, gave light enough to hint at the look of the shores. At first the captain, the mate and the anchor appeared the three forces acting on the ship, the anchor especially, which was loath to come aboard. ”

“ And yet, once or twice already, I was indistinctly aware of an antique look about the ship forward, with her dark beak and all her shrouds and spars and winches; as I watched her at twilight ploughing a grey sea and still driving afield towards a horizon of sad vapours, braided with the sunset’s waning red, and, from time to time until darkness settled, creviced with a primrose gleam, calm, clear and sweet amid its shadows. ”

“ Of this ship, whom her most faithful lovers called a dirty ship, with her short funnel pouring a greasy smoke over her graceless body when even coal-dust rested–of this grimy tramp, playing a sufficient part in the world’s daily life, rolling and lurching up and down oceans with fuel or foodstuff, thousands of tons at a time, it may be safely said that the steward was the feature. In the Optimist it was evident that he as an inspiration excluded almost every other. In the round of day and night, should he himself be unseen for a time, his voice would generally claim your notice ”

“ One evening Tich, the pride of the Bonadventure, who in his uniform cut a most 99 splendid figure, went into the ring and laid about him magnificently. Or there might be a concert, local talent obliging. A passenger ship’s varieties drew a large attendance both from the ships and the shore; there was much funny man, much jazz band, much conjuring, much sentimental singing–in fact plenty of everything which is expected at popular concerts, and every one departed with reflected pride. Mead and myself, however, quarrelled over the amount which I subscribed to the whip-round. ”

“ The sea presently under a brightened sky grew to a rare intensity of blue, that was at its most radiant in the overswirl of water sheered by the bows. Gallant 146 enough the Bonadventure looked in the marvellous expanse, having by dint of much early-morning swilling and swabbing thrown the worst of her nighted colour off; but almost every day I heard bad wishes to the designer of her, though on the score of utility, not the pleasure of the eye. My fancy of a full-rigged ship bowing over these rich seas was usually corrected with reference to “wind-bags”–not folks like me, but ships. ”

“ The pilot came aboard at three, and the tug Lydia presented herself to guide the Bonadventure out: there was much business with ropes fore and aft, and the ship swinging round was free of the wharf about the top of the tide. The warehouses with their stacks of bags, slippered blue-trousered handymen, surpliced overseers with their sampling hollow bayonets, railway trucks and capstans, ubiquitous dogs and all, began to recede. But we had not come more than a couple of miles from the elevators, nor out of sight of the refugee-like town behind them, when we anchored to await 129 Hosea. ”

“ Truck after truck was drawn up, the pin knocked away from the end board and the coal hurled, its dusky clouds fuming out, into the ship: its atmosphere did not seem to strain or irritate the breathing organs of those worthies with the spades, and the pipes, whose vague labouring silhouettes enlivened the gloom. Engines plied constantly beside the docks with long trains of coal. ”

“ The shipping office itself left no clear impression upon me, the next morning, when I attended the business of signing on; but the visit gave me my first view of the crew of the Bonadventure, which was welcome. Many of them were coloured men, as ever, dressed in eye-catching smartness. I reflected on the extent to which the market of boots of two colours must depend on these firemen. Among the others, a Cornishman of odd automatic gait, whose small head balanced a squarish black hat, moved about with an inconsequence suggestive of some clever comedian. ”

“ It was enjoyable to be out of sight of land once more, in a morning coolness, with seagulls piping in our wake; although they were yellowish waters that were rolling by. The second pilot went down to the motor boat due to take him home; the blue peter was hauled down when he had gone; and we hurried south. A dove came by, alighted; presumably our course lay at no great distance from the coast: a sail, a smoke-trail here and there dappled the circling scene. The sailors and apprentices set to, cleaning the holds in preparation for a cargo of grain–a black job. ”

“ He set me at my ease, told me that I should sign on as a member of the crew to-morrow, and allowed me to stay on the ship meanwhile. I was glad of this, being weary of quests for the time being.
Not quite at home, as may be gathered, I went out on deck, and watched the tips in action; admired the mimic thunder–first the abrupt and rending, shattering crash, then the antistrophe of continued rollings–which each truckful of coal makes as it is tumbled into the shoot and thereby into the ship’s holds. ”