Part 5

I woke at about four, following an inquiry into some remote subject, from a dream of roaring thunderbolts, out of whose red and whizzing track I was crouching on the lee side of barns and cowsheds. I looked out; there was a loud wind much like that which brought the storm of the other Sunday. I went back to bed a little disappointed. This squall left the makings of a very good breeze blowing and moreover lowered the temperature. The mate complained of his khaki shorts; the second mate had had to bring out another blanket, although it was a sunny morning. The colour of the sea was changing as we went at a striking rate; but prevailing, in those shallower roads turbid with silt or sand was a greenness as of horse-chestnut leaves at their prime. Here and there were dark acres of discoloured water drifting by, contrasting magnificently with the green and its bright white-crested waves. The afternoon brought into sight the dim shapes of coastline with those now less familiar things trees and houses. This advance was welcomed by Mead and the apprentices who lived in his alleyway with spirited but not spiritual songs.

The next day, Hosea was very early at the door of the wireless operator's cabin, endeavouring to get a reply from the ship's agents in Monte Video, to questions sent some days before. I do not think he succeeded. There was, however, much buzzing, and I got up to enjoy the time of day. It was still keen outside--"a nipping and an eager air"--the sky being blue and the sun unclouded none the less; over the drab green sea, a seagull or two in their lordly fashions flapping against the wind; to starboard, in a gentle haze, a view of rugged shore. This point was one of mountainous eminences, rolling like larger Downs, with white cliffs or sandy beaches under their light red masses. Other steamers were in our neighbourhood, on the same course out or home, some bright with new paint, others scarred and rusty. Probably they were having tripe in batter for breakfast like ourselves, the prose part of me suggested; and I felt with gratitude that I must have become a new and better man, who could now face and even look forward to a food which had hitherto only interested me as a favourite with C. Lamb.

The continued cold caused me to return to socks; but I delayed the reinstatement of the collar, which I had found no such necessity to human happiness.

It seemed no time at all before we had passed Flores Island, and Monte Video came into view. Bright sandy shores gave place to a parched sort of greenery, as it looked, with large buildings here and there; the town beyond lay terraced on rising ground, its square monotonous buildings hot in the sun, whose fervour the roofs returned in dazzling mirror-glare. The spires and minarets of its more pretentious architecture, something scantily, relieved the greyness of the formal rows, barracks, warehouses and whatever else. Farther on a rough squat cone of barren-looking ground surmounted with another heavy square-cut building caught but scarcely charmed the eye. As the heat was dreary, so at a casual glance through the smouldering air this town of flat roofs and tiers.

Hosea, very smart, with his telescope under his arm, and the second mate beside him, stood on the bridge. Hosea was giving orders, the second mate passing them on to the engineer below on the ringing telegraph, and by megaphone to Meacock, who with the carpenter stood to the anchor forward. Flags were run up announcing the _Bonadventure_. No answer, in the form of a launch, was vouchsafed so early, although other ships moored round about us were being visited by agents or doctors. The word was given to let go the anchor. "Forty-five on the windlass!" The cumbrous chain unwound and ran down with a cloud of rust. The _Bonadventure_ lay still, even the cocoa-like mud which her propeller had been diffusing in a few moments thinning away.

A gangway was let down over the side. Firemen and engineers came up from the underworld and all--not only the passenger--looked towards a motor launch which now appeared making swiftly towards us. She was tied up a moment later with ropes at the foot of the gangway, and an Englishman emerging from her small beautifully polished saloon, asked in supercilious fashion for the captain. "Come aboard." "No, I can't," Hosea stalked forth with successful dignity, as if unaware that anyone should be calling; then, going back for the ship's papers, boarded the launch, and we heard that we were going on to Buenos Aires. The papers were quickly seen and restored; letters--general gloom!--were absent, probably with some other agents; and the launch and the young man in his beautiful suit, raiment for a diplomat, departed.

We stayed here at anchor through the afternoon; telescopes sprang up on all sides, even if to unacquainted, non-cubist eyes the view was rather interesting than pleasing. Every half-hour or so, some tramp would leave the harbour. Curiosity in their case was small. Every half-hour, launches puffed along to take back their pilots. The purlieus of Monte Video with their apparent but distant gaiety, even, were soon disregarded.

Bicker and Meacock exchanged humorous history by the engine bunkers, in holiday mood. The steward, who had lost little time in putting out a fishline, leaned over the rail in meditation, not knowing that his misanthropic look was being almost to a line caught by Bicker behind him. Bicker also illustrated in dumb show the action of heaving the poor old man overboard. And, meanwhile, it was hot: no doubt of that! Presently the doleful patience of the steward was rewarded with a foolish-looking fish perhaps three pounds in weight, which was soon cut into sectors and salted.

When towards seven in the evening the anchor was got up and the ship began to move up the River Plate to Buenos Aires, the scene was one to be remembered. 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. At last it came, and the _Bonadventure_ went steadily up the river to the pipe of a rising wind.

Hosea, well satisfied, sat down in his room with his "purser" to theorize in our wonted way. The beauty of the commonplace, it was; then we were considering the simplicity of seafaring men. They must be simple, he said, to have done what they had done, including Columbus. Seafaring in sailing ships, he described in the powerful phrase "fighting against your God"; a phrase which I suppose the early mariners in their piety might have applied to steamers.

Those trim skiffs unknown of yore--

I condense Coleridge--

That fear no spite of wind or tide!

Phillips joined us. "We're discussing nautical history, chief." Being assured that this really was so, Phillips said he was uncertain about the true story of the _Golden Hind's_ boatswain, but he felt certain about our not reaching Buenos Aires in the morning. If he were not a moral man, he would "bet you, sir, two pence on the point."

The pilot, a tan-brown moustached little man, came in--not for his black straw hat, but for his oilskins and goloshes. "That's right," said Phillips with malevolent sympathy, "that's right, pilot, always keep your feet thoroughly dry." The pilot had at least the excuse that it was drizzling outside.

It blew hard and harder all night; and the next morning, Sunday, one thought of the collapse of an English October. About half-past seven we dropped anchor in the "roads" outside our promised port; on all sides bleakly lapping and passing the pea-soup waters of the River Plate. Father Prout's whimsical haunting old lines pervaded my mind as I stared and warmed myself with pacing up and down:

With deep affection and recollection I often think of the Shandon bells, Whose sounds so wild would, in days of childhood, Fling round my cradle their magic spells. On this I ponder, where'er I wander, And thus grow fonder, sweet Cork, of thee, With thy bells of Shandon, That sound so grand on The pleasant waters of the River Lee.

Not far from his old loves, how did some of us once for a brief stay, with those whirlpools in Flanders still roaring more hungrily in our destiny, hear other bells ring in enchanting coolness over the gliding boat, borne on the bosom of wooded Blackwater!

But these bleak and turbid waters turned the ringing song to parody, nor did the _Bonadventure's_ bell, a war product, sound particularly grand upon them as those past bells on their importal streams. The outlook and the chilliness made breakfast unusually welcome. The pilot came in, but having no English to speak of (or with) he could not tell us his real views on the weather and such important matters. The chief loudly--for more clarity--pressed him with such questions as "When does your next STRIKE begin?" but he smiled and ate on.

About dinner-time a fine white launch came out to us; and a number of authorities, including some doctors, came aboard. The ship's company assembled aft like an awkward squad, and the doctors came along the line feeling pulses; a task which they did genially and without strain. That done, and no one being set aside for a further examination, all dispersed. The authorities (a generous allowance of them) proceeded to Hosea's quarters, no doubt to wind up the morning's work in comfort. I listened meanwhile to Mead, who leaning over above their launch, amused himself with making noisy and scandalous observations upon its crew, their careers and their faces. Why this fury? I really believe it was his way of expressing fraternity.

So there was nothing to do but wait for our new pilot on Monday morning: to play cards with a pack whose age had given each card characteristic markings besides those upon its face; to "yarn." At tea, Bicker was in his most assiduous narrative mood. "We were in the West Indies in a boat bringing the bumboat woman aboard--well, she started to climb up the rope ladder and this fellow thought he'd lay his hand on her ankle. So he made a move to do so. Just then" (his broad grin grew almost incredibly broad), "the boat gave a roll, and as he had one foot on the gunwale, and one on the rope ladder he fell into the water. Well, he went down past rows and rows of plates, and we looked out for him to come up.--First a hat, his black hat, came up. And then, a newspaper came up"--[_Chief_ (_ignored_) "To say he wasn't coming up?"]--and then, _he_ came up. Stern first. We dragged him on deck, and there he was all spluttering, and then he said as solemn as a judge:

'That's the fruits of Blacklegging.'"

This closed the proceedings.

Under the sunset the river's dingy current began to take on a strange glory, and changed into a tawny golden wilderness moving down to sea. Then presently it was full moon and pale splendours. A great quiet prevailed; but led by the moon, like the tide and the poets, Mead and myself paced the decks for hours recalling the local colour of war apart from fighting.

XIV

A most placid morning. The sky ahead was silvered with the smoke of unseen Buenos Aires, the water so gleaming that the flat coast lined with trees, to starboard, appeared to be midway suspended between one mother-of-pearl heaven and another. The new pilot arrived in this early tranquillity, and the ship resumed her way up the channel marked out by buoys of several shapes.

The sun increased in power all too fast. I stood on the bridge to hear the pilot and the mates giving their directions: we came to a couple of tugs told off to escort the _Bonadventure_ in. Ropes leapt aboard us, tossed up in the adroitest way and caught as cleverly by our sailors; the bigger cables were attached to them, drawn aboard the tugs and made fast; and so we went on with tugboats fore and aft. The peculiar beauty of the morning mist over Buenos Aires soon began to thin away and disclose great buildings. And now we were almost at our journey's end; and in hurrying ease, drew past fishing boats and small sailing craft into the harbour mouth. On our port side, on a sort of palisade running out into the estuary, a host of sea-eagles perched yelping, their lean black bodies sharply designed in the white light. Their motto I took to be: Multitude and solitude. Beyond their grand stand appeared a green grove of downward foliage, the gaudy precinct of what, I was informed by the wireless operator, who began to act the guide-book, was a destructor for the frozen meat industry. He went on to specify the number of animals daily converted and to give other details which interested him, as an ex-wielder of the pole-axe; but my attention was distracted by the ships swinging into an approach crowded with dredgers and their ugly barges swilling mud, with motor-boats and lighters and as it looked to me every sort of medium for water traffic, bright and drab, proud and lowly in a confusion.

The waterway divides. 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.

Of an expectant company there on Wilson's Wharf, the chief feature was by immediate common consent recognized in an old lady in a heliotrope dress, tightly girdled--and she was of mountainous shape. The demure inch of petticoat revealed below the hem of her well-hitched skirt was not overlooked. Beside this beldame, a long thin youth, a very reed straw by comparison, puffed at a cherry cigarette-holder, vacantly but fixedly eyed the ship and seemed to await her instructions. A laundry cart, with an insufficient animal in the shafts, stood behind them and showed what they too stood for, emblems peculiar.

Scarcely had the _Bonadventure_ come to rest before a swarm of anxious sallow ruffians were aboard for the "ship's orders." The rooms of Hosea himself were not free from their invasion; not free that is, for a moment. Their intruding faces caused him to roar in the most frightful fashion; at which, hesitating as if before an injustice, they got out, but still hung about the gangways. When, presently, he went ashore to pay his official respects to the ship's agents, we saw a trail of these indefatigables close on his heels, and on his return he said that four of them had followed him all the way. I now perceived quite plainly why, when I a stranger appeared aboard the _Bonadventure_ at Barry Dock and desired to find the captain, there was no eager answer to my query. Tailors, bootmakers (one with a motor-tyre or a piece of one over his shoulder), engineers and I don't know who else formed the polysyllabic cordon.

Meanwhile, the _Bonadventure_ was hauled in close to the edge of the quay, and a gang of dock hands came on deck bearing ropes and pulley blocks. The ship's derricks having been lifted, these made the first preparations for discharging the cargo. The hatches were laid open, and the planks covering them pitched aside much as though they were so many walking-sticks. I was not the only one deluded by this despatch into thinking our discharge likely to be over in a few days.

Buenos Aires; a tremendous town, a "southern Paris," a New-World epitome. So much, so little I knew of it. It lay here, its heart not a half-hour's walk from our mooring. But the vastness of the rumoured hive, the heat, I daresay indolence too, prevented me from taking this first opportunity for walking into the strange streets. It was excessively hot, and that settled the matter. There was plenty to watch on the river and alongside: it would have been odd, if it had not proved so. So, swollen somewhat with the feeling that I was now a considerable seafarer, and not unpleased to be mistaken for one by the miscellaneous visitors who had by this examined the decks and accommodation--all doors locked--somewhat fruitlessly, but still loitered, I stayed idle.

Trenches will recur to their old inhabitants. The small coal in the yards here stood walled in with a breastwork of sandbags, built with tolerable skill upon the old familiar pattern of headers and stretchers and as I happened to be remarking upon this fact to the wireless man, interrupting his propaganda about a strike in which he personally would resist to the last, a little launch chanced past with the name _Ypres_ on her bows.

She was but one of an endless to and fro of small craft. The tall and airy passenger boats, at intervals, came by in brilliance. When there was a pause in this coming and going, and nothing more happening on the water than the snapping of the small yellow catfish at bread floating below the ship, I still felt a quiet and languid gratitude for the novelty of being where I was.

That gratitude was to be tempered soon. The plague of the mosquitoes of the docks had been painted dark enough for me during the days of approach; and when I got to bed, the threatened invasion had begun. Determining not to consider the question at all, I read deep in my pocket copy of Young's _Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality_, as in worse quarters many a time, and duly went to sleep like a philosopher.

XV

Could this be Saint Valentine's Day? Here in a dreary looking dock with a surplus of sun but a seeming lack of oxygen, and only a sort of amphibious race as company? Newspapers were at any rate valentine enough. They were read with real care, football results being perhaps the consolation most sought.

Hosea showed me the way into the town. We turned out over the docks, out at last from a kingdom of coal-dust, over a swing bridge; took a tram, and were soon at the shipping agents' offices. He spent some time in earnest conference here, and the visit ended with a visit to other agents' offices, and that again with an adjournment with a serene member of the staff to a bar. In this excellent place, my ignorance of a kind of drink, saffron in colour and with a piece of pineapple submerged, was soon dispelled. The collection of olives, biscuits, monkey-nuts and flakes of fried potato which the waiter brought with the drinks was to me unexpected. We went, with our good-natured guide, to lunch in a huge hotel. Gaining the top of the building by the lift, we sat at a table near the windows of a luxurious room filled with luxurious people, and had the pleasure of looking as we ate over the less celestial roofs of the town to the calm flood of the River Plate beyond. Distance lent enchantment to this view also. The conditions were good for eating, our friend's romantic tales apart.

We departed from this commendable place, and, there being still engagements for Hosea with the shipping agents, we went there. Emerging, he had to go to the British Consulate. We hired a taxi. The traffic of Buenos Aires, or practice and precept differ, was free from irksome restrictions of speed; and we were whirled over the cobblestones and tramlines and round trams, horsemen, wagons, rival cars and everything else in a breath-taking rush. "I get in these things," said Hosea, "saying to myself, If I don't come out of this alive, then I shan't." We got out alive. The Consul's workshop (it was perhaps known by a more dignified name) was in a scrubby street; and the young man in charge had my sympathy. However, it was not my fault that he was being slowly roasted.

That call left Hosea at liberty to explore the town. We walked on and on, looking at the shops, and be it acknowledged at the beauties who went by, until we arrived at the small park over which the Museum rises to that southern sun, ornate and massy. Here we entered to spend the afternoon among a few visitors and as many official incumbents. We entered solemnly resolved to find a Palace of Art--Hosea putting away from him all his connection with ships and the worries of that next necessity, the "charter party."

Plaster casts and original statuary were plentiful in the Museum. The eye of the weary mariners rested none too long upon these. The multitude of paintings, however, were considered gently and methodically: Hosea would stand before the weakest trying to comprehend the artist's intention, and to claim something in his daub as a virtue. Sometimes he would put on his eyeglass to survey the subject. To me, there seemed no such quality here--I speak as a scribe, without authority--as there was quantity.

There have been many energetic and accomplished administerings of paint, but to what purpose? The eternal allegory, demanding one nude figure or more, and justifying by the general level Hosea's praise of a well-known picture called "September Morning," or sweetened description of evening, with its cows coming home under its warped moon, its ploughman in a vague acre, and the rest. Was this the southern genius?

One or two modern pictures here revealed a strength and idiosyncrasy beyond almost all the rest. A portrait of six youths, drawn with fierce intensity of colour and of line, expressing distinctions of character in subtle vital sharpness, long detained me. Another untypical picture, as recent as the last, was based upon a rustic festival or ritual with which I of course was unacquainted; but the epic lives of peasant men and women in their long combat with the stern giver of grain were legible in the strange georgic faces and the mysterious melancholy glory of their assembly.

--Seemed listening to the earth, Their ancient mother, for some comfort yet.

Among the many harmless little pieces representing vases of flowers, woodland melody, and other conventions, I caught sight of a portrait of a young girl ("My lady at her casement" type) drawn with mild ability. The signature, very large and clear, was

CH. CHAPLIN.

On referring to the minute brass plate beneath so innocent a vanity, we learned that Charles Chaplin, 1825-1891, was a painter of the "French School." Pictures must run in the family.

The first afternoon, Hosea and myself could find no specimen of an English artist among the multitude: but returning another day to make certain (and once again we had the gallery more or less to ourselves) we found a small and typical study by Wilkie, and a portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence. Before this last, a work of the loftiest morality--in its subject I mean--and of a colouring delicately fine, Hosea stood in enthusiasm. "I'm not sure," he said, and once again drew an impression before proceeding, "that that isn't the finest thing we've seen." 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.