V. THE STORM PETREL
I paused on the bridge in Old Gravel Lane, that surprising lapse in the walls of Wapping, because water was on either side of it. The street lamps were just lit, but the sky was still high and yellow. The forms of the ships under the dock warehouses were plain, like dim creatures asleep in the shadows at the base of cliffs. It did not look like the present, that silent scene, but the past. I was peering into the past, a vista down the London Dock which evening was quickly closing, when Captain McLachlan took hold of me and brought me back to Old Gravel Lane. I didn’t know his ship was in port. “Don’t lie,” he jollied me. “Don’t pretend you knew I was in, and that you were looking for me.”
As if anyone would lie to McLachlan! No need. He is too good-natured, too sagacious. So judicious and deliberate that he would see through almost any neat and nicely polished artifice. “You never told me you would be here to-day,” I reminded him.
“Well, I’m off at midnight,” he said, still with a grip on my arm. “You come along with me.”
“Not to Glasgow,” I said in alarm.
“No. Just as far as she is now. There she is.” The skipper pointed to a misty confusion of funnels and masts up the dock.
It seemed easy to get to her. She was not far off. But in fact, at that hour, which was neither day nor night, our little journey through streets and sheds, and by quaysides where lower lights were burning though day was in the sky, and the shapes of things were queer, was like an excursion into an inverted world. It was confused. What were streets doing there, and ships? They had been jumbled in an antipodean upset. The lights were not in the right places. The shadows were all wrong. Funnels were in the streets, apparently, and houses in the water. But the skipper kept on talking, stepping over mooring ropes and children on kerbstones.
“That was a nasty passage down,” he was saying.
“It was? But I don’t remember a blow this week.”
“I do; but you wouldn’t have noticed it. I didn’t like it. Here’s me, with forty years of it, but I didn’t like it. Once or twice I wondered whether the old girl could stand it. Aye. Most of the way from the Broomielaw. Mind that rope.”
We were standing now on concrete, looking up at a steamer’s counter. This was McLachlan’s charge. She was not a liner, but an aristocrat compared with the usual coaster. She looked quite big in that place and in that light.
The skipper was shaking his head. “God forbid that I ever see the Storm Petrel again.”
This was a little ridiculous, and not at all like my friend. Almost superstitious of him. I thought it was his fun, but then he turned to mount the gangway of his ship. His face, downcast to his footing, was serious enough. His short, hard moustache looked even grim. It was amusing to discover that the skipper, among the orderly and scientific sequence of his experiences and thoughts, should allow an old myth about a bird to interrupt Scotch logic so irrelevantly. I chuckled as I followed the elderly seaman to his ship, and to divert his attention asked his opinion about the derivation and uses of the word cleat. That gangway reminded me of it. There had been a dispute ashore about it, and McLachlan was the man who would know. He keeps even The Golden Bough in his cabin, with Burns, Shelley, The Evolution of the Idea of God, an encyclopædia, and other incongruous companions. He is the unknown but harsh enemy of all hurried journalists. His untiring exactitude over trifles is awe-inspiring, and even tedious to casual and indifferent men. He paused on deck, gave me the root of the word, and assured me of all its uses, with qualifications; then turned into a door and descended to the saloon.
His steward stood at attention as we squirmed into those seats which will not push back from saloon tables, and then the man went, as the captain made a perfunctory sign for what we wanted. The skipper sat without speaking till he had the glass in his hand. “Ye see, I knew we were in for it as soon as I clapped eyes on yon lunatic,” he remarked. He had not been at all cautious with what he measured into the glasses. “As soon as the Storm Petrel came aboard, two firemen went ashore. He was enough for them. No good talking to the fellows. They were scared. They knew what that warning meant, and it happened they saw him coming up the gangway.”
“I thought it was a bird,” I said.
“No. It’s a parson. You’d know him fine if you were coasting. A wee man. I can’t leave the ship myself, but I wished the fellow to the devil. He didn’t look like a man of God to me that night for all his clericals. And he was so damn jolly when he saw me. He always is. ‘There’s something brewing, captain,’ says he, rubbing his hands. ‘You’re going to get a dusting.’ He was in his oilskins then. A good beginning, wasn’t it?”
“And you got it?”
“And we did. Anyhow, the sight of that man made me give a good look to everything.” He paused for a spell, with his service cap pushed well back, so that I could see the unweathered top of his forehead. He began talking to the clock at the end of the saloon very deliberately. “I’ve seen too much to be easily scared. Perhaps I’m too old to be scared at all. No. I wouldn’t call it fear, at my age. It’s not that. Y’see, you can watch heavy weather without worry, when you know your ship. That’s just it—knowing her. It isn’t a matter of calculation. You know, but you don’t quite know why. So I wouldn’t say that I’m afraid of big waters—not often—not to call it that. But it’s happened at times that I’ve had a sort of white feeling inside me while gripping a stanchion. You could tell it then. The little ship herself was frightened. She’d got more than she could do.
“So it was that night, and all the next day. I had the feeling twice. But that blackbird was enjoying it. He always does, though I hoped then he’d got more than he’d bargained for. But not him. He was all right. I wished he’d gone overside.”
“Who is he? What’s his caper?” I asked.
“He’s a parson. Got a quiet vicarage somewhere, I suppose. I’ve thought about him a lot. Church too peaceful for him, maybe. He mustn’t sin, not in a small country parish, and he needs excitement. It’s as good as drink to him. Better, perhaps. Anyhow, he looks for trouble. He comes and has it with us. ‘Sir,’ says the steward, ‘Mr. Jenkins has just come aboard.’ ‘The hell he has,’ I say, and look at the glass. Sure enough, down it goes. And there the wee man is. ‘Hullo, captain,’ he says, ‘good evening. But it won’t be good for long. I’ve been watching the barometer, and I’ve just had this telegram from the Meteorological Office. There’s going to be a snorter.’ He always seems as pleased as though he’d come into a legacy. Rubs his hands. Looks round. ‘I’m coming along with you,’ says the blackbird.
“And a snorter it is, for sure. All the coasters know him. You ought to hear the men when they see him hurrying along the quay, just before we cast off. They’d tip him overside, give him all the trouble there is, if he wasn’t always so grateful afterwards for the good time he’s had with us. He’s free with his tips. He pays for his fun.”
“Well, anyway, that’s over,” said the skipper. He poured out some more. “I deserve this,” he went on. “That last was a voyage and a half. Now look here. There’s four hours to midnight. I haven’t seen you to talk to you yet. You run home and get your bag. Come round with us. You know you can. So don’t argue. I want to hear about things. It’ll be a quiet trip this time.”
“Any other passengers?”
“Not one. It’s not the season. We’ll have it to ourselves. Likely we’ll have spring weather all the way. That last blow must have emptied the sky. What’s this I hear about the American astronomer who is denying Einstein? Come and tell me.”
I rose to go. It was tempting. I had got to like the smell of the ship. She looked good. And McLachlan’s reliable face, with its taut mouth and moustache, and mocking and contemplative eyes—a talk with him would be more than a holiday. Could I do it?
We mounted the companion to the deck. It was a still night, with an audience of placid little clouds about a full moon. The dock was asleep. I went with the captain to his cabin, for he had a book of mine, and he wished to return it. That peaceful cabin, with its library, and the broad back of the sailor as he peered into his bookcase, settled it. I would hurry home and get my bag. Then there was a voice behind me: “Sir, Mr. Jenkins has come back. He’s just come aboard.”
The skipper turned slowly round to stare at his steward, dragging his spectacles from his eyes as he did so. His mouth was partly open. He only stared for some seconds.
“Has that man brought his bag, Jones?”
“Yes, sir. He’s in his oilskins, sir.”