Chapter 9

The "Bran" Wharf was then a large pontoon, with dwelling accommodation for Custom-house officers and harbour officials. It was moored just at the entrance to the dock or mole, and was in charge of an official who regulated the berthing of vessels. This man was originally a boatswain aboard a Russian warship. He was illiterate, but very clever, so much so that great power was put into his hands; indeed, he became quite as powerful in his way as his Imperial Majesty himself. Every conceivable complaint and petty dispute was taken to him, and it was soon found that it could be settled in a way that did not involve a fine or imprisonment. In fact, there were occasions when a favourite English captain or mate asked this official's aid in getting the Russians to work properly. He would, if agreeably disposed, come aboard, spit, stamp, and swear at the men in a most picturesque way, and if he had had a glass or two of grog, or wanted one, and the captain or mate made a very bad report, he would lash the skulkers with a piece of rope. When he was finished there was no more need for complaint. This notorious person was called Tom the Boatswain. He drew very fine distinctions as to whom he favoured with his countenance and his chastening rod. For obvious reasons, he loathed a Swede and a Norwegian. In truth, he told me himself that Englishmen were "dobra" (good), and that Norwegians and Swedes were "knet dobra." He spoke a peculiar kind of English, with a fascinating accent, and when he went his rounds in the early morning, rowed by two uniformed sailors, studied respect was paid to him. His invitations to breakfast, or to have a glass of brandy (which he preferred to whisky), indicated the esteem, fear, or amount of favours inspired by him. He in turn endeavoured to pay a hurried visit to each of his guests, ostensibly to see that their vessels were properly berthed, and the men working properly, but really to test the generosity of the captains, who seldom let him go without a "douceur," which was sometimes satisfactory. He was accustomed, when asked to have refreshment, to request that his two men should have a nip also. One morning he visited a favourite captain who had arranged with his mate to act liberally towards the men. His stay in the cabin was prolonged, and when he came on deck and called for the boat, his devoted henchmen did not come forth. He looked over the quarter-deck, and was thrown into frenzy by seeing them both lying speechless, their bodies in the bottom, and their legs sticking up on the seats of the boat. He got into her, kicked the two occupants freely without producing from them any appreciable symptoms of life, and then finally rowed himself back to the "Bran" Wharf. The two culprits were compulsory teetotalers after that.

Their master went on accumulating roubles, which, under Russian law, Tom could not invest in his own name, and perhaps he had personal reasons for secrecy. He did not allow the amount of his wealth to be known to gentlemen who might have relieved him of the anxiety of watching over it. But, alas! there came a period of great trial to Tom. That portion of the "Bran" Wharf where the roubles were concealed took fire. The occupants had to fly for their lives, and soon the whole fabric was burnt to the water's edge. Another pontoon was erected in its place, and Tom put in command; but before he had time to replace the fortune he had lost, he was superseded by a naval officer, and his roubles were taken from him. I believe his dismissal was brought about by one of the countrymen to whom he had such a strong aversion making a complaint to the Governor about his partiality to Englishmen. Great sympathy was secretly extended to poor Tom by his English friends, but the loss of his position and his wealth broke his heart, and he only survived the blow for a few weeks.

In addition to controlling the berthing of vessels, and keeping the harbour free from confusion, it was Tom's duty to see that no fires or lights were allowed either by day or night, and, as these rigid rules were frequently broken, his "hush money" very largely contributed to his already affluent income. Nor did his removal affect the acquisitiveness of his successor, who loyally followed in his footsteps. As soon as a sailing-vessel arrived in the Roads, the galley fire had to be put out before she was allowed to come into the Mole. All cooking was done ashore at a cookhouse that was loathsomely dirty. A heavy charge was made for the use of the place, and also for the hire of the cook's lurky, a flat-bottomed kind of boat constructed of rough planks. These boats were invariably so leaky that on the passage to and from the shore they became half-foil of water, and the food was frequently spoiled in consequence. But, even if all went right, the crews often had to partake of badly cooked, cold rations. Many a meal was lost altogether, and once or twice a poor cook who could not swim was drowned by the boat filling and capsizing. The frail craft of this kind were of curious shape, and only a person who had the knack could row them. No more comical sport could be witnessed than the lurky race which was held every season. Many of the cooks never acquired the art of rowing straight, and whenever they put a spurt on the lurky would run amuck in consequence of being flat-bottomed and having no keel. Then the carnival of collisions, capsizing of boats, and rescuing of their occupants began. Some disdained assistance, and heroically tried to right their erratic "dug-outs." It would be impossible to draw a true picture of these screamingly funny incidents, but be it remembered they were all sailor-cooks who took part in the sport, and the riotous joy they derived therefrom was always a pleasant memory, and kept them for days in good temper for carrying out the pilgrimage to and from the cookhouse.

The popular English idea is that there are only two classes in Russia--viz., the upper and lower; but this is quite a mistake. There has always been a thrifty shopkeeping and artisan class, which may be called their middle lower class. Then there is a class that comes between them and the common labourer. Nearly all the shopkeepers that carry on business at Cronstadt, Riga, and other Northern Russian ports during the summer have their real homes in Moscow, and mostly all speak a little English. There are also the boatmen, who are a well-behaved, well-dressed lot of men, whose homes are in Archangel. They, as well as the tradesmen, come every spring, and leave when the port closes in the autumn. In the sailing-ship days each of the greengrocers--as they were called, though they sold all kinds of stores besides--had their connection. Every afternoon, between four and six, batches of captains were to be found seated in a greengrocer's shop having a glass of tea with a piece of lemon in it. It was then they spun their yarns in detail about their passages, their owners, their mates, their crews, and their loading and discharging. If their vessels were unchartered they discussed that too, but whenever they got authority from their owners to charter on the best possible terms they became reticent and sly with each other. To exchange views as to the rate that should be accepted would have been regarded as a decided token of business incapacity. Supposing two captains had their vessels unchartered, each would give instructions to be called early in the morning, that they might go in the first boat to St. Petersburg, and neither would know what the other intended. When they met aboard the passenger boat they would lie to each other grotesquely about what was taking them to town. If they were unsuccessful in fixing, they rarely disclosed what had been offered; and this would go on for days, until they had to fix; then they would draw closer to each other, and relate in the most minute fashion the history of all the negotiations, and how cleverly they had gained this or that advantage over the charterers; whereas, in truth, their agents or brokers had great trouble in getting some of them to understand the precise nature of the business that was being negotiated. The following is an instance.

Mr. James Young, of South Shields, whose many vessels were distinguished by having a frying-pan at the foretopgallant or royal mast-head, had a brig at Cronstadt which had been waiting unloaded for some days. Her master was one of the old illiterate class. His peace of mind was much disturbed at Mr. Young's indifference. At last he got a telegram asking him to wire the best freights offering. He proceeded to St. Petersburg, bounced into Mr. Charles Maynard's office, and introduced himself as Mark Gaze, one of Jimmy Young's skippers.

"Well," said Mr. Maynard, in his polite way, "and what can I do for you, Captain Gaze?"

"Dee for me, sorr? Wire the aad villain that she's been lyin' a week discharged."

"Yes," said the broker, writing down something very different. "And what else?"

"Tell him," said Mark, "te fetch the aad keel back te the Gut, and let hor lie and rot wheor he can see hor!"

"Very good," said Maynard, still waiting; "and what else?"

"Whaat else? Oh, tell him to gan to h----, and say Mark Gaze says see. Ask him whaat the blazes he means be runnin' the risk of gettin' hor frozzen in. Say aa'll seun be at Shields owerland, if he dizzen't mind whaat he's aboot."

"Well, now," said the agent, "I think we have got to the bottom of things. We'll send this telegram off; but before it goes, would you like me to read it to you?"

"For God's sake send the d---- thing away!" said Mark. "And tell him te come and tyek the aad beast hyem hissel; or, if he likes, aa'll run hor on te Hogland for him."

"Well, you do seem to understand your owner and speak plainly to him. I should think he knows he has got an excellent master who looks after his interest."

"Interest! What diz he knaa aboot interest? He knaas mair aboot the West Docks. Understand him, d'ye say? If aa divvent, thor's neebody in his employ diz. Aa've been forty-five years wiv him and his fethor tegithor. Aa sarved me time wiv him. He dorsent say a word, or aa'd tell him to take his ship to h---- wiv him."

"That is really capital," said the much amused agent. "Now, what do you say, captain, if we have some light refreshment and a cigar?"

"Ay, that's what aa caal business. But aa nivvor tyek leet refreshment. Ma drink is brandy or whisky neat," said Captain Gaze, his face beaming with good-nature.

They proceeded to a restaurant, and when they got nicely settled down with their drinks and smokes, the skipper remarked--

"Aa wonder what Jimmie waad say if he could see Mark Gaze sittin' in a hotel hevvin' his whisky and smokin' a cigar?"

"I should think," said Mr. Maynard, "he would raise your wages, or give you command of a larger ship." And then there was hearty laughter.

Captain Gaze had a profound dislike to Russians, and more than once narrowly escaped severe punishment for showing it. I have often heard him swearing frightfully at the men passing deals from the lighters into the bow ports of his vessel, and declaring that God Almighty must have had little on hand when he put them on earth. Certainly he would have considered it an act of gross injustice if, having killed or drowned any of them, he had been punished for it.

Mark did not know anything about history that was written in books. He only knew that which had occurred in his own time, and the crude bits he had heard talked of amongst his own class. He, and those who were his shipmates and contemporaries during the Russian War, believed that a great act of cowardice and bad treatment had been committed in not allowing Charlie Napier to blow the forts down and take possession of Cronstadt.[2] They knew nothing of the circumstances that led to the withdrawal of the fleet, but their inherent belief was that a dirty trick had been served on Charlie, and Russians, irrespective of class, were told whenever an opportunity occurred, that they should never neglect to thank Heaven that the British Government was so generous as to refrain from blowing them into space.

At Cronstadt, after the introduction of steam, it became a custom for stevedores' runners, and representatives and vendors of other commodities, to have their boats outside the Mole at three and four o'clock in the morning during the summer. The captain of each vessel, as soon as she was slowed down or anchored, was canvassed vigorously by each of the competitors. One morning, the representative of Deal Yard No. 6, who was an ex-English captain, came into sharp conflict with a Russian competitor. The latter rudely interrupted the ex-captain while he was complimenting a friend who had just arrived on having made a smart passage. All captains like to be told they have made a smart passage, but the ardent advocate of Deal Yard No. 6 kept welcoming his friend at great length, obviously to prevent the other runners from getting a word at the new arrival. There arose a revolt against him, headed by a person who was always supposed to be a Russian, but who spoke English more correctly than his English competitor. The ex-captain was somewhat corpulent. He was short, and had a plump, good-natured face which suggested that he was not a bigoted teetotaler; he had a suit of clothes on that did not convey the idea of a West-end tailor; his dialect was broad Yorkshire, and his conversational capacity interminable. The representative of No. 10 Deal Yard undertook to stop his flow of rhetoric by calling out, "Stop it, old baggy breeches! Give other people a chance!" But he paid no heed, and did not even break the thread of his talk until the captain of the steamer began to walk towards the companion-way, when he stopped short and said, "Well, I suppose I'm to book you for No. 6?" and then there was a clamour. The whole of the runners wished to get their word in before the captain definitely promised, but they were too late. No. 6 had got it; but instead of accepting his success modestly, he was so elated at having taken away an order from another yard, that he stood up in his boat and congratulated himself on being an Englishman.

"No use you fellows coming off here when I'm awake; and, you bet, I'm always awake when there's any Muscovite backstairs gentlemen about."

As the boats were being rowed into the Mole again, some one asked who had got the ship. The Russian competitor, who was angry at the work being taken from his master, called out, "Bags has got her, the drunken old sneak!"

Bags lost no time in letting fly an oar at him, the yoke and rudder quickly following. His vengeance was let loose, and he poured forth a stream of quarter-deck language at the top of his voice. His phrases were dazzling in ingenuity, and amid much laughter and applause he urged his hearers to keep at a distance from the fellow who had dared to insult an English shipmaster.

"Or you will get some passengers that will keep you busy. They--_he_--calls them _peoches_, but we English call them _lice_!"

This sally caused immense amusement, not so much for what was said as for his dramatic style of saying it. His antagonist retorted that he had been turned out of England for bad language and bad behaviour, and he would have him turned out of Russia also. This nearly choked the old mariner with rage. He roared out--

"Did I, an English shipmaster, ever think that I would come to this, to be insulted by a Russian serf? I will let the Government know that an Englishman has been insulted. I will lay the iniquities of this Russian system of rascality before Benjamin Disraeli. I knows him; and if he is the man I takes him for, he won't stand any nonsense when it comes to insulting English subjects. He has brought the Indian troops from India for that purpose, and when the honour of England is at stake he will send the fleet into the Baltic, and neither your ships nor your forts will prevent his orders to blow Cronstadt down about your blooming ears being carried out. I know where your torpedoes and mines are, and Disraeli has confidence in me showing them the road to victory. The British Lion never draws back!"

The Russian deal-yard man, to whom this harangue was particularly directed, went to the Governor on landing, and stated what the rough, weather-beaten old sailor had been saying. The Governor communicated with the authorities at St. Petersburg, and an order came to have the old Englishman banished from Cronstadt and Russia for ever within twenty-four hours. The poor creature had made a home for himself in Cronstadt, his wife and four children being with him. The blow was so sharp and unexpected, it stupefied him. His first thought was his family, but there was little or no time for thought or preparation. He had either to be got away or concealed. A liberal distribution of roubles at the instigation of many sympathizers made it possible for him to be put aboard an English steamer, and a week after his banishment was supposed to have taken effect he sailed from Cronstadt, a ruined and broken-hearted man. The old sailor's grief for the harm his wayward conduct had done to his wife and family was quite pathetic, and so far as kindness could appease the mental anguish he was having to endure it was ungrudgingly extended to him, and when he left Cronstadt he left behind him a host of sympathizers who regarded the punishment as odious.

The fact of any public official listening to a miscreant who told the story of a stevedores' row, to which he himself had been a party, and seriously believing that the threats, however extravagant and bellicose, of a verbose old sailor could be a national danger, is, on the face of it, so ludicrous that the English reader may easily doubt the accuracy of such an incident; and yet it is true.

* * * * *

In other days I used occasionally to meet members of the Russian revolutionary party at my brother's home in London. They were all men and women of education and refinement. The first time I met them the late Robert Louis Stevenson (who generally used the window as a means of exit instead of the door), William Henley, George Collins (editor of the _Schoolmaster_), and, I think, Mr. Wright (author of _the Journeyman Engineer_) were there. The talk was very brilliant. My brother, who was a charming conversationalist, kept his visitors fascinated with anecdotes about Carlyle and John Ruskin, whom he knew well. They spoke, too, about the unsigned articles which they were each contributing to a paper called the _London_, and their criticism of each other's work was very lively. But to me the most touching incident of the afternoon was the story told by one of the revolutionary party about Sophie Peroffsky, who mounted the scaffold with four of her friends, kissed and encouraged them with cheering words until the time came that they should be executed. He related also a touching and detailed story of little Marie Soubitine, who refused to purchase her own safety by uttering a word to betray her friends, and was kept lingering in an underground dungeon for three years, at the end of which she was sent off to Siberia, and died on the road. No amount of torture could make her betray her friends. They spoke of Antonoff, who was subjected to the thumbscrew, had red-hot wires thrust under his nails, and when his torturers gave him a little respite he would scratch on his plate cipher signals to his comrades.

The account of the cause and origin of the revolutionary movement and its subsequent history, which sparkled with heroic deeds, was told in a quiet, unostentatious manner. I had just come from Russia. I had been much in that country, and thought I knew a great deal about it and the sinister system of government that breeds revolutionaries; but the tales of cruel, senseless despotism told by these people made me shudder with horror. I had been accustomed to abhor and look upon Nihilists as a scoundrelly gang of lawless butchers, but I found them the most cultured of patriots, loving their country, though detesting the barbarous system of government which had driven them and thousands of their compatriots from the land and friends they loved, and from the estates they owned, into resigned and determined agitation for popular government and the amelioration of their people. The upholders of this despotic system of government are now engaged in a life-and-death struggle, and all civilized nations are looking forward to the time when, for the first time in its history, Right and not Might shall prevail in Russia. It has been said, "Happy is the nation that has no history." Russia knows this to her cost, for her history is being made every day, with all the horrible accompaniments of massacres, injustice, and tyranny. Only it should be remembered that the fight must be between tyranny and liberty, and that the Russian peasant must work out his own salvation. This may be--nay, must be--the work of years, but England's sympathy will be with the workers for freedom. English feeling on the matter was well expressed by the statesman who had the courage to say publicly, "Long live the Duma!" and every Englishman will in his heart of hearts applaud any efforts made to secure constitutional government.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: Napier was a great favourite with his sailors, notwithstanding his apparent harshness to them at times. Whenever he wanted a dash made on a strong position, he inspired them with a fury of enthusiasm by giving the word of command incisively, and then adding as an addendum, "Now, off you go, you damned rascals, and exterminate them." This was a form of endearment, and they knew it.]

"Dutchy" and his Chief

A handsome barque lay at the quay of a South Wales port, ready to sail, and waiting only for the flood tide. Her name was the _Pacific_, and she was commanded by a person of laborious dignity. His officers were selected to meet the tastes and ambitions of their captain, whose name was John Kickem. I have said before it was customary in those days for crowds of people to congregate on the quays or dock sides to watch the departure of vessels. Some came out of curiosity, but many were the relatives and friends of different members of the crew who wished to say their _adieux_, and to listen to the sombre singing of the chanties as the men mastheaded the topsail yards, or catted and fished the anchors. These vessels were known as copper-ore-men. They were usually manned with picked able seamen and three apprentices. In this instance they were all fine specimens of English manhood. It was no ordinary sight to witness the display of bunting as it stretched from royal truck to rail, and the grotesque love-making of the seafarers as they hugged and kissed their wives and sweethearts over and over again with amazing rapidity. One of the favourite songs which they delighted to sing on such auspicious occasions was rendered with touching pathos--

"Sing good-bye to Sal, and good-bye to Sue; Away Rio! And you that are list'ning, good-bye to you; For we're bound to Rio Grande! And away Rio, aye Rio! Sing fare ye well, my bonny young girl, We're bound to Rio Grande."

It didn't matter, of course, where they were bound to, this ditty was the farewell song; and it always had the desired effect of melting the bystanders, especially the females, though Jack himself showed no really soft emotion. Not that they were not sentimental, but theirs seemed always to be a frolicsome sentimentality.