Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) (579 page)

“Bless her heart!” cried the major fervently; and the battered old Bohemian, as he stooped over and kissed her, felt a tear spring to his eyes as he knew that he had come into harbour after life’s stormy tossings.

“No billiards or cards for three months, then,” said the little woman firmly, with her hands round his arm. “None at all mind! I am going into Hampshire on a visit to my cousins in the country, and you shall not see me for that time, though you may write. If you can give me your word of honour when I come back that you’ve given up your naughty ways, why then—”

“What then?”

“Wait till then and you’ll see,” she said, with a merry laugh. “No, really, I won’t stay another moment. Whatever will the guests say? I must, Toby; I really must—” Away she tripped, while the major remained standing where she had left him, feeling a better man than he had done since he was a young ensign and kissed his mother for the last time at the Portsmouth jetty before the great transport carried him off to India.

Everything in the world must have an end, and Mrs. Scully’s dance was no exception to the rule. The day was breaking, however, before the last guests had muffled themselves up and the last hansom dashed away from the door. The major lingered behind to bid farewell, and then rejoined his German friend, who had been compelled to wait at the door for the latchkey.

“Look here, major,” the latter said, when they came into their room, “is it well to tell a Brussian gentleman to go to the devil? You have much offended me. Truly I was surprised that you should have so spoken!”

“Me dear friend,” the old soldier answered, shaking his hand, “I would not hurt your feelings for the world. Bedad, if I come into the room while you are proposing to a lady, you are welcome to use the strongest German verb to me that you can lay your tongue to.”

“You have probosed, then?” cried the good-natured German, forgetting all about his grievance in an instant.

“Yes.”

“And been took — received by her?”

“Yes.”

“Dat Is gloriful!” Von Baumser cried, clapping his hands. “Three hochs for Frau Scully, and another one for Frau Clutterbuck. We must drink a drink on it; we truly must.”

“So we shall, me boy, but it’s time we turned in now. She’s a good woman, and she plays a good hand at whist. Ged! she cleared the trumps and made her long suit to-night as well as ever I saw it done in me life!” With which characteristic piece of eulogy the major bade his comrade good night and retired to his room.

CHAPTER XXX
.

AT THE “COCK AND COWSLIP.”

Tom Dimsdale’s duties were far from light. Not only was he expected to supervise the clerks’ accounts and to treat with the wholesale dealers, but he was also supposed to spend a great part of his time in the docks, overlooking the loading of the outgoing ships and checking the cargo of the incoming ones. This latter portion of his work was welcome as taking him some hours a day from the close counting-house, and allowing him to get a sniff of the sea air — if, indeed, a sniff is to be had on the inland side of Woolwich. There was a pleasing life and bustle, too, in the broad, brown river, with its never-ending panorama of vessels of every size and shape which ebb and flow in the great artery of national life.

So interesting was this liquid highway to Tom’s practical mind, that he would often stand at the head of the wharf when his work was done and smoke a meditative pipe. It was a quiet spot, which had once been busy enough, but was now superseded by new quays and more convenient landing-places. All over it were scattered great rusty anchors, colossal iron chains, deserted melancholy boilers, and other debris which are found in such places, and which might seem to the fanciful to be the shells and skeletons of strange monsters washed up there by the tide. To whom do these things belong? Who has an interest in them? Of what use are they? It appeared to Tom sometimes as if the original owners and their heirs must have all died away, and left these grim relics behind them to any one who might have the charity to remove them.

From this coign of vantage a long reach of the river was visible, and Tom sitting there would watch the fleets of passing vessels, and let his imagination wander away to the broad oceans which they had traversed, and the fair lands under bluer skies and warmer suns from which they had sailed. Here is a tiny steam-tug panting and toiling in front of a majestic three-master with her great black hulk towering out of the water and her masts shooting up until the topmast rigging looks like the delicate web of some Titanic spider. She is from Canton, with tea, and coffee, and spices, and all good things from the land of small feet and almond eyes. Here, too, is a Messagerie boat, the French ensign drooping daintily over her stern, and her steam whistle screeching a warning to some obstinate lighters, crawling with their burden of coal to a grimy collier whose steam-winch is whizzing away like a corncrake of the deep. That floating palace is an Orient boat from Australia. See how, as the darkness falls, a long row of yellow eyes glimmer out from her sides as the light streams through her countless portholes. And there is the Rotterdam packet-boat coming slowly up, very glad to get back into safe waters again, for she has had a wildish time in the North Sea. A coasting brig has evidently had a wilder time still, for her main-topmast is cracked across, and her rigging is full of the little human mites who crawl about, and reef, and splice, and mend.

An old acquaintance of ours was out in that same gale, and is even now making his way into the shelter of the Albert docks. This was none other than the redoubtable Captain Hamilton Miggs, whose ship will persistently keep afloat, to the astonishment of the gallant captain himself, and of every one else who knows anything of her sea-going qualities. Again and again she had been on the point of foundering; and again and again some change in the weather or the steady pumping of the crew had prevented her from fulfilling her destiny. So surprised was the skipper at these repeated interpositions of Providence that he had quite made up his superstitious mind that the ship never would go down, and now devoted himself with a whole heart to his old occupation of drinking himself into delirium tremens and physicking himself out of it again.

The Black Eagle had a fair cargo aboard, and Miggs was proportionately jubilant. The drunken old sea-dog had taken a fancy to Tom’s frank face and honest eyes, and greeted him with effusion when he came aboard next morning.

“Knock me asunder, but you look rosy, man!” he cried. “It’s easy to see that you have not been lying off Fernando Po, or getting the land mist into your lungs in the Gaboon.”

“You look well yourself, captain,” said Tom.

“Tolerable, tolerable. Just a touch of the jumps at times.”

“We can begin getting our cargo out, I suppose? I have a list here to check it. Will you have the hatches off at once?”

“No work for me,” said Captain Hamilton Miggs with decision. “Here, Sandy — Sandy McPherson, start the cargo, will ye, and stir your great Scotch bones. I’ve done enough in bringing this sieve of a ship all the way from Africa, without working when I am in dock.”

McPherson was the first mate, a tall, yellow-bearded Aberdonian. “I’ll see t’it,” he said shortly. “You can gang ashore or where you wull.”

“The Cock and Cowslip,” said the captain, “I say, you — Master Dimsdale — when you’re done come up an’ have a glass o’ wine with me. I’m only a plain sailor man, but I’m damned if my heart ain’t in the right place. You too, McPherson — you’ll come up and show Mr. Dimsdale the way. Cock and Cowslip, corner o’ Sextant Court.” The two having accepted his invitation, the captain shuffled off across the gangway and on to terra firma.

All day Tom stood at the hatchway of the Black Eagle, checking the cargo as it was hoisted out of her, while McPherson and his motley assistants, dock labourers, seamen, and black Kroomen from the coast, worked and toiled in the depths below. The engine rattled and snorted, and the great chain clanked as it was lowered into the hold.

“Make fast there!” cries the mate.

“Aye, aye, sir!”

“All right?”

“All right, sir.”

“Hoist away!”

And clank, clank went the chain again, and whir-r-r the engine, and up would come a pair of oil casks, as though the crane were some giant forceps which was plucking out the great wooden teeth of the vessel. It seemed to Tom, as he stood looking down, note-book in hand, that some of the actual malarious air of the coast had been carried home in the hold, so foul and close were the smells evolved from it. Great cockchafers crawled about over the packages, and occasionally a rat would scamper over the barrels, such a rat as is only to be found in ships which hail from the tropics. On one occasion too, as a tusk of ivory was being hoisted out, there was a sudden cry of alarm among the workers, and a long, yellow snake crawled out of the cavity of the trunk and writhed away into the darkness. It is no uncommon thing to find the deadly creatures hibernating in the hollow of the tusks until the cold English air arouses them from their torpor, to the cost occasionally of some unhappy stevedore or labourer.

All day Tom stood amid grease and steam, bustle and blasphemy, checking off the cargo, and looking to its conveyance to the warehouses. At one o’clock there was a break of an hour for dinner, and then the work went on until six, when all hands struck and went off to their homes or to the public-house according to inclination. Tom and the mate, both fairly tired by their day’s work, prepared to accept the captain’s invitation, and to meet him up in his quarters. The mate dived down into his cabin, and soon reappeared with his face shining and his long hair combed into some sort of order.

“I’ve been performing my ablutions,” he said, rolling out the last word with great emphasis and pomposity, for, like many Scotchmen, he had the greatest possible reverence for a sonorous polysyllable. Indeed, in McPherson, this national foible was pushed to excess, for, however inappropriate the word, he never hesitated to drag it into his conversation if he thought it would aid in the general effect.

“The captain,” he continued, “has been far from salubrious this voyage.

He’s aye complainin’ o’ his bodily infirmities.”

“Hypochondriacal, perhaps,” Tom remarked.

The Scotchman looked at his companion with a great accession of respect.

“My certie!” he cried. “That’s the best I’ve heard since a word that

Jimmy M’Gee, of the Corisco, said the voyage afore last. Would you

kindly arteeculate it again.”

“Hypochondriacal,” said Tom laughing heartily.

“Hypo-chon-driacal,” the mate repeated slowly. “I shouldn’t think Jimmy M’Gee kens that, or he’d ha’ communicated it to me. I shall certainly utilize it, and am obleeged to you for namin’ it.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Tom. “I’ll let you have as many long words as you like, if you are a collector of them. But what is the matter with the captain?”

“It’s aye the drink,” the mate said gravely. “I can tak’ my modicum mysel’ and enjoy it, but that’s no the same as for a man to lock himself up in his cabin, and drink rum steady on from four bells in the mornin’ watch to eight bells in the evenin’. And then the cussin’, and prayin’, and swearin’ as he sets up is just awfu’. It’s what might weel be described as pandemoniacal.”

“Is he often like that, then?” Tom asked.

“Often! Why, he’s never anything else, sir. And yet he’s a good seaman too, and however fu’ he may be, he keeps some form o’ reckoning, and never vera far oot either. He’s an ambeequosity to me, sir, for if I took a tithe o’ the amount I’d be clean daft.”

“He must be dangerous when he is like that?” Tom remarked.

“He is that. He emptied a sax-shooter down the deck last bout he had, and nigh perforated the carpenter. Another time he scoots after the cook — chased him with a handspike in his hand right up the rigging to the cross-trees. If the cook hadn’t slid down the backstay of the mast, he’d ha’ been obeetuarised.”

Tom could not refrain from laughing at the last expression. “That’s a new word,” he said.

“Ha!” his companion cried with great satisfaction, “it is, is it? Then we are quits now on the hypochondriacal.” He was so pleased that he chuckled to himself for some minutes in the depths of his tawny beard. “Yes,” he continued at last, “he is dangerous to us at times, and he is dangerous to you. This is atween oorsels, as man to man, and is said withoot prejudice, but he do go on when he is in they fits aboot the firm, and aboot insurances, and rotten ships, and ither such things, which is all vera well when sequestrated amang gentlemen like oorsels, but sounds awfu’ bad when it fa’s on the ignorant tympanums of common seamen.”

“It’s scandalous,” Tom said gravely, “that he should spread such reports about his employer. Our ships are old, and some of them, in my opinion, hardly safe, but that’s a very different thing from implying, as you hint, that Mr. Girdlestone wishes them to go down.”

“We’ll no argue aboot that,” said the canny Scot. “Muster Girdlestone kens on which side his bread is buttered. He may wish ‘em to sink or he may wish ‘em to swim. That’s no for us to judge. You’ll hear him speak o’t to-night as like as not, for he’s aye on it when he’s half over. Here we are, sir. The corner edifice wi’ the red blinds in the window.”

During this conversation the two had been threading their way through the intricate and dirty lanes which lead up from the water side to the outskirts of Stepney. It was quite dark by the time that they reached a long thoroughfare, lined by numerous shops, with great gas flares outside them. Many of these belonged to dealers in marine stores, and the numerous suits of oil-skin, hung up for exhibition, swung to and fro in the uncertain light, like rows of attenuated pirates. At every corner was a great public-house with glittering windows, and a crowd of slatternly women and jersey-clad men elbowing each other at the door. At the largest and most imposing of these gin-palaces the mate and Dimsdale now pulled up.

“Come in this way,” said McPherson, who had evidently paid many a visit there before. Pushing open a swinging door, he made his way into the crowded bar, where the reek of bad spirits and the smell of squalid humanity seemed to Tom to be even more horrible than the effluvium of the grease-laden hold.

“Captain Miggs in?” asked McPherson of a rubicund, white-aproned personage behind the bar.

“Yes, sir. He’s in his room, sir, and expectin’ you. There’s a gent with him, sir, but he told me to send you up. This way, sir.”

They were pushing their way through the crowd to reach the door which led behind the bar, when Tom’s attention was arrested by the conversation of a very seedy-looking individual who was leaning with his elbows upon the zinc-covered counter.

“You take my tip,” he said to an elderly man beside him. “You stick to the beer. The sperits in here is clean poison, and it’s a sin and a shame as they should be let sell such stuff to Christian men. See here — see my sleeve!” He showed the threadbare cuff of his coat, which was corroded away in one part, as by a powerful acid. “I give ye my word I done that by wiping my lips wi’ it two or three times after drinkin’ at this bar. That was afore I found out that the whisky was solid vitriol. If thread and cotton can’t stand it, how’s the linin’ of a poor cove’s stomach, I’d like to know?”