William McFee

“ Signals break from the escort and are answered from our bridge. I turn to a sergeant who is shambling to and fro by the machine-room door, and inform him that Port Said is in sight, and that he will be in harbor in an hour or so.
And then, just as suddenly as we entered, the door of that heated chamber of the sea opens and we pass out into a warm humid wind. The wind and the news wake everybody. The soldiers, who have encamped on our after-deck during the voyage, suddenly display a feverish activity. ”

“ They stood round it and deliberated in silence, tying on life-belts which they had picked up on the bridge-deck. The Polynesian gave another lunge, and they climbed on the raft and held tight.
The Polynesian was in her death-throes. She had been cut through below the bridge, and the water was filling the cross-bunker and pressing the air in Number 2 hold up against the hatches. While they sat there waiting, the tarpaulins on the hatch ballooned up and burst like a gunshot, releasing the air improvised within. She plunged again, and the sea poured over her bulwarks and cascaded around them. ”

“ The breakwater is crowded with citizens taking the air, for the walks of Port Said are restricted and flavored with the odors of Arabian domesticity. We pass on, and the hotels and custom-house buildings come into view. All around are the transients of the ocean, anchored and for a moment at rest. ”

“ He never goes near the firing-line at all. Our young friend Angus MacFadden has that job. When the young gentleman with the slave-bangle and gold-mounted fountain-pen and expensive Kodak has figured out certain calculations in his dug-out office, Angus, who resembles an extremely warlike bellhop, with his gaunt Highland chum beside him, will scramble up out of his trench, make a most determined rush toward a given point, and, in short, complete the job, whatever it may be. ”

“ The moon rides high over Pelusium as we go back to the ship. Tommy and I will keep the morning watch together for once and talk over old times. Tomorrow I shall go through the hot white dust of the Rue el Nil and be paid off in the consul’s office for my two years’ labor. There is a mail-boat next week, and perhaps I shall board her, passenger-fashion, and go across the blue Mediterranean, 22through sunny France, across the English Channel, where the Polynesian stands by forever, up through Sussex orchards and over Surrey downs. ”

“ Tommy and I sit side by side in the stern in silence as the Arab boatman, in blue gown and round white cap, pulls us up to the Custom-House quay. We pass out at a side gate and find ourselves in Egyptian darkness. ”

“ I look into the future and see myself, a gray elderly failure, still keeping a six-hour shift on a Mediterranean transport, my life spent, my friends and relatives all dead, Angus and his chums gone west, and a new generation coming out, with vigorous appetites for fresh provisions. ”

“ Now, it is perfectly simple in theory to sit on a raft and allow a ship to sink under you. The ship sinks, and the raft, retaining its buoyancy, floats. Quite simple, in theory. In practice, however, many factors tend to vitiate the 21simplicity of it. Indeed, it becomes so difficult that only by the mercy of God could anybody attempt it and survive. The foredeck of the Polynesian was like the foredeck of most ships, cluttered up with hatch-combings, winches, ventilator-cowls, steampipes, masts, derricks, bollards, snatch-blocks, dead-eyes, ladders, and wire-rope drums. ”

“ I remember seeing something like it in the face of a youth, religiously brought up, who was listening for the first time to an atheist attempting to shake the foundations of his faith. And while I ruminate upon this unusual portent in Tommy’s physiognomy, he plunges into the second part of his story. It has its own appeal to those who love and understand the sea.
For the rest of the day the Polynesian’s course was a series of intricate convolutions on the face of the Atlantic. As the Third Mate put it in his lively way, you could have played it on a piano. ”

“ The lights are shrouded in green petroleum cans, and one has the illusion of sitting in the glade of some artificial forest. Hotel waiters, in long white robes cut across with brilliant scarlet sashes, and surmounted by scarlet fezes, move noiselessly to and fro with trays of drinks. An orchestra, somewhere beyond, plays a plaintive air. ”

“ On the bridge of the Polynesian, too, there is excitement of sorts. The Chief Mate, who has been rushing about, helping the ammunition carriers, then assisting the stewards with their rough surgery, then up on the bridge again, has come up and is prancing up and down, every now and then looking hard at the Old Man, who stares through the telescope at the gray dot. ”

“ Meanwhile we have arrived at Port Said. The engines stop and go astern violently, and the pilot comes alongside in a boat and climbs the rope-ladder. Just ahead is the breakwater, with a couple of motor patrols keeping guard over the fairway. Our escort puts on speed and goes in, for her job with us is done. She has gone in to coal, and she will be ready in a few hours to take another transport out. She and her sisters are like us—they are never through. The big ships may lie for days, or even weeks, in harbor. We small fry have to hurry. Back and forth we ply without ceasing. ”

“ We were always chums. In some obscure fashion, we got on. Tommy is North Country—dry, taciturn, reticent, slow to make friends. A hot-air merchant makes him restive and he goes away. He abhors bluffers. ”

“ My interest is with Angus and his chums. I look out of my machine-room window and watch them getting ready to disembark. They are very amusing, with their collapsible aluminium pannikins, their canvas washbasins and buckets, their fold-up shaving tackle and telescopic tooth-brushes.
There is one tough old private of the Old Army among them. He has the Egyptian and two South African medals. He never seems to have any kit to bother him. ”

“ He is small for his age, and he has a most engaging smile. When I asked him how on earth he got into the Army he explained that he had ‘misriprisinted his age.’ He has a chum, a gaunt Highlander, who scarcely opened his lips all the voyage, and who sat on the hatch sewing buttons on their clothes, darning their stockings, and reading a religious pamphlet entitled Doing it Now.
There is another sergeant, too, a young gentleman going home to get a commission. He is almost to be described as one apart, for he holds no converse with the others. ”

“ He thinks the sea is beautiful, after the bare hot gulches and ravines. He is so fair that the sun has burned his face and knees pink instead of brown. I asked him what he was doing before the war, and he said his father had a seed-farm in Essex and he himself was learning the business. ”

“ I used to tell him 9that he was the original of Browning’s ‘Shadowy Third,’ he is so small, with delicate hands and that charming, elusive, shadowy smile.
Oh, I remark, as I reach for the talcum powder, he was torpedoed, was he? He nods and smiles at O’Henry’s trick of falling off the settee head over heels. And the poor old Malthusian too,—what a box of tricks she was, with her prehistoric pumps and effervescent old dynamo,—gone at last, eh? Tommy says nothing about the catastrophe save that he lost his gear. ”

“ He knows all the twenty-one moves, as we say. Then there is a very young man who reads love stories all the time, a rosy-cheeked lad with the Distinguished Service Order ribbon on his tunic.
Another, almost as young, is tremendously interested in refrigeration. He comes into my engine-room and stares in rapt incredulity at the snow on the machine. ”

“ An electric fan buzzes and snaps in the corner and seems only to make the air hotter. An Arab passes in the alleyway outside and calls to some one named Achmet in an unmelodious howl. (All male Arabs are named Achmet apparently.) ”

“ He 3walks in a mincing way, he has a gold watch with a curb-chain on one wrist, a silver identification plate and a silver slave-bangle from Saloniki on the other, and an amethyst ring on one of his fingers. As the Chief Engineer said to me one day, he needed only a spear and a ring through his nose to be a complete fighting man. ”