Part 7

The change was, partly on account of the neighbouring industry, "uncertain if for bale or balm." I felt that we might even miss the lively sight of the passenger boats coming and going, and all their gilded press of friends and acquaintances about the landing-places; their tiers of bright lamps at night rounding the bend between us and the Roads. Perhaps the youths would no longer come by with their ship's stores of macaroni, their jars of wine and panniers of onions and other vegetables; nor the lighters, with their crews glaring in unwashed and unchallenged independence in the whole world's face, and their yellow mongrels scampering up and down the decks. The British Bar with the Patagonian Indian and the giant but amicable cockroaches would be too far away. However, we had the prospect of other monotonous distractions if not those. For there were evidence of benefit; green swampy groves, a sort of common with ragged horses at feed, and farther off the irregular line of a landscape not unlike summer's horizon, gave the eye a pleasant change. Football would now be possible on grass and not a dust-heap. Sailor-town was on the opposite bank--a miscellany of ship's chandlers' offices, gin palaces, untidy trams, and nondescript premises.

The gangway was lowered, the donkeyman was seen at once going ashore with his mandoline, and we ourselves of the football persuasion followed with the Football. We returned in time to see the steward's patience nominally rewarded with a small yellow catfish, who showed the greatest wrath at the trick which had been played on him, stiffening his poisonous fin and actually barking.

The next morning, despite the odour of the guano, was a better one than those in South Basin. For all its mud, the river looked cheerful; its many small craft, as yellow as vermilion or as green as paint could make them, lying quiet or passing by, caught the early sun. Even the dredgers' barges, with their hue of Thiepval in November, showed the agreeable activities of a new day, and breakfast.

But we were not to be long in Riachuelo. About midday it became known that the _Bonadventure_ was to leave before evening for Bahia Blanca, a three days' journey to the south. The further orders, what cargo was to be received, and where it was to be delivered, were as yet withheld. Phillips, the chief engineer, was disappointed at this departure--his son would have been able to meet him in town within a day or two. To leave a message for him in charge of the Mission, he proposed that I should go with him in the afternoon, and that I was happy to do.

Meanwhile, awaiting dinner, we strolled along the waterside. It was sultry and glaring. We passed shipping of all sorts and conditions, old junk, discarded masts, boilers eaten through with rust, anchors imbedded in the ground, even a torpedo-boat gone to ruin, nameless; saw an incredibly old man with his beard done in a knot, whittling away at a piece of wood in the sun, tribes of mongrel dogs, and the casual population of the tin town which rambled here drowsy and malodorous, down to the water's edge. The purple trumpet-like flowers that climbed the ragged woodwork seemed not more gay, nevertheless, than the young men and women who crowded to and from the transporter between this shipping parish and Buenos Aires.

From Buenos Aires itself, what but the hastiest impression could I take away with me? Melancholy it was to me to find so little apparent survival of the town as it must have been in its first centuries. My last walk did not altogether revise my picture of bar-tobacconist-bar-tobacconist; of powdered Venuses, over-dressed Adonises; of shops without display, receding obscurely; of cinematograph theatres crudely decorated with notices of rank buckjumping "dramas"; of innumerable tramways, here, there and everywhere; of green sunny courtyards at the end of passages between dismal shuttered façades; of trees with drooping foliage before flat roofs with flimsy chimneys--mere drain-pipes--at the top of high white dead walls; of bonneted policemen with their hands on their swords; of boys teasing horses; of whizzing taxis, and dray-horses fighting for a start on the inimical cobbles; of pavements suitable for tight-rope walkers; of the power of money; of living for the present, or the day after to-morrow; of a straw-hat existence. But I must admit that my scantiest notions of a town refer in temper to the quality of its second-hand bookshops.

So then, the ship being under orders to leave at four, soon after five the port authorities held a sort of roll-call amidships, and the pilots and the tugs arrived. The port authorities consisted of a young officer who looked likely to trip himself up with his beautiful sword, a lanky humorist, with sergeant's chevrons, at his heels, and one or two other attendants. Soon after these vigilants had gone down the ladder again, the _Bonadventure_ began to move, and the bags of guano were a tyranny that is overpast. That channel into which I had been pleased to see the _Bonadventure_ come I now watched her leave without remorse. The dredgers fall behind our course, the fishing-boats, and the perches of the sea-eagles. We met a breeze, surprisingly strong, which made even these slothful waters choppy. The sun went out in a colder sky, beyond the outlines of the great chimneys and transporters; and presently a line of dwindling lights, surmounted by one or two more conspicuous, stood for Buenos Aires. Meantime the wind blew hard and loud. When the first pilot went to make his way home, the tug coming up for him was flung against the sides of the ship two or three times, and he was obliged to jump from his swaying rope ladder, "judging the time." We ran on, with many red and yellow lights flashing around our track. The taste of coal-dust, let alone the feel of it as a garment, made me wish the wind an early good night.

XVIII

There were differences of opinion about the precise distance between Buenos Aires and Bahia Blanca, in which it seemed the authority of the steward was not accepted. Travelling light, however, the _Bonadventure_ seemed little concerned about fifty miles either way. A current assisted in this turn of speed.

It was enjoyable to be out of sight of land once more, in a morning coolness, with seagulls piping in our wake; although they were yellowish waters that were rolling by. The second pilot went down to the motor boat due to take him home; the blue peter was hauled down when he had gone; and we hurried south. A dove came by, alighted; presumably our course lay at no great distance from the coast: a sail, a smoke-trail here and there dappled the circling scene. The sailors and apprentices set to, cleaning the holds in preparation for a cargo of grain--a black job. Bucketful after bucketful was flung over the side, the wind playfully carrying off the murky clouds. I washed clothes at a safe distance.

It was at this time or near it that an addition to my daily course was made. So long as the _Bonadventure_ was at sea, the ship's officers received cocoa and sandwiches by way of supper. To this edible privilege I could not imagine that I had the slightest claim, nor in fact was I anxious to be elected; but when the steward out of his magnanimity conferred it upon me I naturally received it with thanks.

The cocoa indeed was not to be lightly considered when ten o'clock found me, as it mostly did, with Mead on his night watch. The first night after we had left the mouth of the Plate, his mind was full of one matter. Before we had been released from Wilson's Wharf, acting on the advice of the vendor, he had bought a fifth share in a lottery ticket. With this qualification, he began to paint his future in all the colours of £1,166--his possible, or as he wished to be assured, his probable, harvest. A small schooner, in the enchanted atmosphere of his pipe, seemed already to own him master; she would trade for long years of prosperity in South Sea islands, where uncultivated fruits and beauties abound. While we agreed on the plan, the moon went down; multitudes of stars shone out, and meteors at moments ran down the sky. A broad glow to starboard revealed the nearness of the coast. Everything was most still, except perhaps Mead's spirit. There might be some hitch. But no, he felt his luck was in; he was sure, something told him that he carried the winning number.

The day's entries in my diary now began thus, or nearly: "Need I say it again--One mosquito, etc., but I killed him; then, one mosquito, etc." The persistence of these self-satisfied hovering devils was puzzling, for the mornings dawned almost bitterly fresh, and the breeze was always awake. Its direction had now laid, during the night, a carpet of glittering coal-dust along the passage outside the door; and the day being Sunday, which should by all precedent be marked by an increased radiance in the outward as well as in the inward man, it was impossible to keep clean. For the inward man, I once again took refuge in Young's _Night Thoughts_, which, despite the disapproval of Mr. Masefield's Dauber, I will maintain to give room and verge enough to annotate, parody, wilfully miscomprehend, skip, doze, and indulge what trains of thought whether ethical, fanciful, or reminiscent.

A gentler air, a bluer sea, a sandy coast in view. There was something lyrical about the "dirty ship" as with the buoyancy of her cargoless holds she fleeted to the south. Mead, his future resplendent with £1,166 and its South Sea bubble, seemed to feel this rhythmical impulse. Every now and then, in his consultations, he would break forth into singing, but seldom more than a fragment at a time; now it was "Farewell and adieu to you, bright Spanish Ladies"--a grand old tune--now "Six men dancing on the dead man's chest." But most, he gave in honour of his native Australia a ballad of a monitory sort with a wild yet sweet refrain. It began

I was born in the city of Sydney, And I was an apprentice bound, And many's the good old time I've had In that dear old Southern town.

The apprentice fell in with a dark lady--indeed "she came tripping right into his way." It was an unfortunate encounter. He became her "darling flash boy." He could readily put the case against her when, as receiver of stolen goods, he had served some years in jail; and then, like the author of _George Barnwell_, he addressed apprentices on the subject:

So all young men take a warning and Beware of that black velvet tie.

But yet, and here was the charm of the ballad, and the token of his entanglement by Neæra's hair, ever and anon came the burden

For her eyes they shone like the diamonds, I thought her a Queen of the land, And the hair that hung over her shoulders was Tied up with a black velvet band.

When Mead later on gave me a copy of this song, which I shall not forget, duly set out in "cantos," he was good enough to ornament it with a little picture of the black bow as tailpiece.

The heat became very strong, and as the day declined, a great cloud-bank rose up out to sea, and the air settled to that stillness in which the fall of the ripples from the side sounds most insistent. Dark came on, and from two arches or caverns of smouldering twilight under the extremities of that mighty cloud the lightnings burst; lightnings in whose general wide waft of brightness intense white wreaths suddenly lived and withered, branches of fire stretched forth and were gone; while in the opposite heaven "like a dying lady," went the horned moon.

Meanwhile the _Bonadventure_ not slacking her unusual speed came to a lightship; then (for this was a pilot station) the engines thrashed up the water as she manoeuvred for the pilot's most comfortable approach. The boatmen came rowing him lustily out to us; our rope ladder was lowered--at these moments I was sensible of a sort of proud anxiety on the part of all aboard, that such a detail should be carried out with all despatch--and up he came. And after him, a rope was asked for, and sent down; up came a great stringful of fish, gleaming like the sea under the moon; and once more the rope went down, and a collection of jars which were at once thought to contain wine was hauled on board. Then, from the boat "Finish!" but she did not depart, making fast to the _Bonadventure_. She circling about the lightship, at length brought her companion within a stone's throw. Then the boat was cut adrift, and we went on our way towards a line of buoys whose flashes lit up the expanse ahead.

We came now close by the misty lights of a town named Puerto Militar and further on those of Ingeniero White, the little port of Bahia Blanca to which the _Bonadventure_ was actually bound, began to beckon. About eleven the anchors were let go, and the pilot retired to sleep; but I still stayed with Mead, regarding dully the dull lights of our surroundings, and consuming cocoa, and blessing the exhalation of the continent which had first met me at sea some weeks ago. Already fishing, the steward leaned over the rail close by; he had often painted the angling at Bahia Blanca in enthusiastic colours. However, he seemed to catch nothing.

By this the moon, that had grown almost a giantess as she stooped down the horizon, and had reddened like a glowing coal to the last almost, was dwindling. The orb became a beacon dying on a hill; then dropped below the sky. The lightnings over the quiet sea had almost ceased.

XIX

I slept heavily, and when I got up, the _Bonadventure_ had moved into the channel towards Ingeniero White, and was lying at anchor outside that place. The scenery about us was of pleasing ugliness, worthy of George Crabbe's poetical painting. To seaward there lay long stretches of mud, or banks of a sort of grass--long layers of brown and green ending at the frontier of a blue-grey rainy sky; and the land was low, featureless (save for a mountain height in the hazy interior) and dark. Close to our mooring was the assemblage of motley huts and tenements, galvanized iron roofs, tall chimneys, and more notably the grain elevators, under which several other steamers were lying. Above the salt marshes a rainbow touched the clouds, and too soon the sun was pouring upon everything a dazzling sultry heat.

At breakfast the fish which the pilot had brought aboard as a kindly offering during the night were eaten, curried. This mode of serving them displeased the Saloon. The steward, affecting to be in a philosophic doze in his lair, could not fail to have heard such scathing remarks as these:

"The nicest fish I've had down here."

"Yes, spoiled."

"Wasted."

"Why the devil must they go and camouflage it?"

"If it had been high we'd have had it neat."

"Must have curry and rice on Monday morning. Mustn't go outside the routine."

"Well, you see, if they started on the wrong note on Monday they wouldn't be able to pick up the tune for the rest of the week."

"O, it's easy. Steak, steak, steak."

We hurried our breakfast amid these criticisms, as the port authority was expected. Towards nine o'clock, all hands being assembled amidships, his launch came to the foot of the gangway. Eight sailors in white uniform rowed this launch. He divested himself of his sword, came up, and went inside Hosea's quarters to "talk things over"; whereupon, the parade broke up. The next event was, we changed our mooring. As we passed to the new tether, which was among several tramps as ladylike as ourselves, I had my first experience of the groaning, screeching and gasping noise which the machinery of a dredger can make, as its buckets come round on the endless chain and empty themselves into the barge alongside. I wonder these contrivances were not introduced during the Passchendaele operations. They would have served two purposes, that of keeping a good depth of water for the infantry to swim through; and that of demoralizing the enemy.

We remained only a few minutes in this new position. Then we moved into a dock, lined with warehouses as they appeared, under whose grey tin roofs were stacked bags of grain in large profusion. With much shouting and manipulating of ropes, we got in, behind the steamer _Caxambu_; alongside a framework of piles. On these, even the less accessible slanting timbers, many a ship's name scrawled in black or red paint, and often followed by the date of the call, addressed the new-comer's eye. In these inscriptions the S's, B's, D's, and 9's, had a tendency to be reversed. I thought that the exotic poets and others who deny their readers capital letters, apostrophes and so forth might here find another inspiration. The medley of names included such as the _Trebarthan_, the _King Arthur_, the _Alf_, the _Olive_, the _Bilbao_. And the _Keats_; why _Keats_? Apart from this mystery, I could not help contrasting many of the names with those of the figure-head days, and like the posy of a ring, some of them came into my mind, from my reading, the _John and Judith_, _Charming Nancy_, _Love and Unity_, _Lancashire Witch_.

Here, the heat seemed to redouble, and the flies to bite harder accordingly. For some time nothing much happened. The Captain, after being visited by the doctor, ship's chandler and others, but not such a swarm as on our previous berthing, went ashore, leaving Bicker, who prided himself upon his mathematical faculty, to wrestle with the problems of the Customs manifest. I myself had handed over trench stores; this looked a worse job, and there were the familiar dilemmas of one thing with different names.

The ship was not here, it soon showed, to take her time. Loading began after dinner. A leather band or rather gutter working on rollers was lifted out from the wharf over each of several holds, and a spout fixed at its extremity; the gang in charge spread sacking under the feeding band and directed the spout as they wished. Then the machinery behind began to drone, and the grain, like a gliding brook, to travel along the leather band; whence, at the overturn, it leapt into the spout which directed its descent into the hold, while a sort of idle snowstorm of chaff and draff glistened thick in the sunlight. Many heads looked over the rails to see this process at first, but there was a sameness about it and the heads quickly found other occupation. Presently I went to look at the activities behind the scenes, where a gang was taking bags of grain from a railway truck and emptying them through a grating into another travelling conduit, which duly under the flooring of the building bore the wheat to the automatic machines. There, it seemed to my inept wish to learn, it was amassed until a certain weight was registered, and that point reached the heap was flung forward into the feeder which ran up to the spout over our hold. Before the yellow current arrived there, it had been sampled at intervals by a boy who squatted beside, dipping a horn-shaped can on the end of a stick into it, and filling thereby small labelled sacks convenient to him.

The Brazilian steamer ahead of us was receiving the grain in bags, which looked oddly like pigs asleep as they were hurried along the endless band. On this steamer, the _Caxambu_, real live pigs and sheep were routing about over the forecastle. I was told that she was an ex-German. Anyway, though in déshabille, she was a handsome ship. Her bell was the most resonant; the _Bonadventure's_ was known still more surely for a thin tinkler when that gong rang.

For the settlement beyond, it was not conspicuous. The spires of Bahia Blanca showed up white some few miles inland; the nearer scene was one of tin roofs, of railway coaches and wagons, small muddy decks and mud flats. Naturally the steward was fishing. But nothing was biting. He stood pensively gazing into heaven, even holding the line listlessly, when the third mate having collected a good attendance crept up behind him as quiet as a cat and jerked the line with the hungry violence of a monster, contriving also to make his retreat out of sight before the aged angler had quite decided that he was _not_ going to catch a huge bass. This heartless deception was very popular. Something was necessary to while away the evening despite its bright array of dewy-lighted clouds, which suited the coolness of the air. The grumble of the machinery gave place to "Cock Robin" and other classic opportunities for bawling; and cards were brought out.

The next day, cold enough for every one, and proving that the English climate is not alone in its uncertain habits, went on quietly. The party who brought the sacks of grain to the door of the railway truck, the man who there at singular speed cut away the string from the mouths of the sacks, the lads who swept all loose grain from the truck and its neighbourhood--all were working to load us as if their lives depended on it. Actually, no doubt, this was the case. The _Bonadventure_ ceased to tower aloft out of the water.

Bicker, Mead and the passenger-purser passed the evening in the village. We went in and out of shops in a casual manner. There was one whose contents were sufficiently varied for the sailors' fancy. On one wall hung a large collection of crudely cured pelts, the fur of wild cats, foxes, and other animals. From the ceiling hung, unpitied, many canaries imprisoned in yellow cages; under the counters were displayed baskets made of turtle shells, lined with pink sateen. Cigarettes of all nationalities, boot polishes of uncertain price and utility, and in the window a regiment of notes and coins advertising the money-changer's department, caught my eye. There were even old books. As we were leaving two sailors entered bearing a cage wrapped in paper. They accosted the fat and greasy shopkeeper abruptly.

"Canary eh? died 'smornin' eh?"

(This "eh?" was the mainstay of our Anglo-Argentine intercourse.)

"Ah, Ah, no give monjay!"

"Yes, mucho plenty monjay."

The question in short was, what about giving us our money back?--but we could not stop long enough to see the result. Further along, children's sandals were ranged in a window. Mead thought that he would shine in a pair like them; but the shopkeeper thought his inquiry for sandals size 9 a good joke.

At this stage, when Mead emerged, I was very sorry to have to call his attention to a board in the window, which in his concentration on the sandals he had overlooked. It was a board giving the numbers (announced that day) of the winning lottery tickets. None of these numbers coincided with that owned by Mead.

The disappointment quite naturally led us to the refreshment room at the station and kept us there until the hour of closing. The angry Mead in some measure became reconciled to the injustice which he had suffered, and we all enjoyed the friendliness of the waiters. These, not being over busy, played the fool, except one who behind the bar sat with pen and ink and a folio blank-book laboriously copying an English exercise on the ancient pattern: Have you seen my glove?--Yes, I have seen your glove, &c. One endeavoured to persuade us that he was a Russian, and feigned a horrid interest in a news paragraph about Lenin. The other indulged in an anti-French speech, with gestures. "La Liberté!" he jeered, at the same time grasping vigorously in all directions.