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The Derelict Hulk—The Signal of Prosperity in Tai-o-hae—The Night Phantoms—Representative Types of Nations—Grimes the Cockney

ICANNOT recall the history of that derelict hulk, from what port it sailed, or whether its crew found a refuge on that shore, or slumbered till the trump of doom beneath the sunny seas rolling to the sky-lines. All I know is, that it was beached there after buffeting its “roaring forties,” and by the cut of its jib, the beautiful curves of the bows and figurehead, it must have sailed from its native port long before I, or even its new derelict crew, were born. Could an aspiring novelist have hidden in that hulk’s depth and listened, he would have gathered enough vivid material to have lasted his lifetime.

The most wonderful sight on that hulk, to me, at any rate, was when the washing was hung out to dry. The clothes-line stretched from the forecastle to a portion of deckhouse stanchions amidships. On that clothes-line would hang—fitting flags for that derelict—ragged old shirts and pants, flapping and waving their many-coloured patches to the South Sea breezes. Those rough men only did their washing when things were slack, which meant no ships in, and therefore no treating going on in the grog shanty. Consequently the derelicts’ washing-line was an indisputable dial, signal and sign-post. Nor do I exaggerate when I say that those old pants and shirts told of the prosperous hours of drunken glory, or of the slack times on the slopes of the Parnassus of beachcomberism. Indeed the incoming schooners of those days, creeping through the sky-lines from distant seas, would sight the ragged shirts or the empty clothes-line through the ship’s telescope, and so know the exact state of affairs at Tai-o-hae.

Several of the beachcombers, however, positively refused to sleep on that old hulk and told tales of night phantoms. Even the men who did sleep in those gloomy depths said they did not like the noises that they could hear on wild nights; they had their suspicions. I must admit that some of the sounds I heard on that wreck at night did sound a bit uncanny. The masts were still standing, and on the yards hung the tattered rigging and rotting canvas. When the wind blew, even slightly, on hot nights, the rigging wailed. It would sound just like children crying in the night up there aloft. If the moon was out you could see shadows flitting across the grey sails and figures clinging to the moonlit rigging. These things made those superstitious shellbacks swear that the hulk was haunted at times by her old crew.

“I know, I know,” said one old fellow to me. “They comes back, climbs aloft and sings their old sea-chanteys, all out of their ’ere graves; that’s what it is.”

As those rough men became involved in a good deal that concerns my reminiscences, I will bring the reader into closer touch with them. As they crept up on to the deck, after a sound night’s rest, they would yawn and gaze about them, and then stare at the blue sky. Possibly they were thankful to be alive, maybe had just said their prayers. “No fear,” I hear you say. Well, it is faithfully recorded in the annals of beachcomberism that two or three of those sinful old shellbacks knelt by their bunks every night—and said their prayers.

Passing down the plank gangway in single file to the sands, they made a bee-line for the Alpha and Omega of their existence—Ranjo’s grog shanty. In that low-roofed saloon of the Southern Seas they sat enthroned on salt-beef tubs. Smoking their corn-cob pipes, they chewed plug tobacco, and proceeded religiously with their toilet—that is to say, one little small-tooth comb was handed around and each one combed his hair and tangled whiskers. One could search the world over and never sight so perfect a set of noble-looking vagabonds. Each one seemed some wonderful figurehead, some symbolical, living representative of a nation’s typical emotion and crimes. They were far from being bad men, notwithstanding their twinkling eyes and grog-blossomed nasal organs. I’m not going into details over their birth and the university they honoured. I know nothing about their lost opportunities; only one thing am I certain of—they were once boys. And, believe me, the boy, in a beautiful sense, still laughed and looked through their wicked eyes. Though dead for years, the boy’s ghost still lived, and shed tears when the chill came as hope ran high. It did the same childish things—gave away the last shilling when it should have been kept; and ah! how many more ridiculous, boyish deeds. They were, in short, the world’s worst men, and, as one knows, the world’s worst men have virtues that are undreamed of in the hearts of the world’s best men.

The tallest was a typical Yankee specimen. I never saw so perfect a resemblance to a cartoon in the flesh as “Uncle Sam.” His face was cadaverous, alert and pleasant-looking. The poise of his head told of imagined greatness, as one who felt that he had helped to create the universe as well as being a representative of the land of the almighty dollar. His chin resembled that of an aged billy-goat. Whenever he yawned or spat vindictively and yelled, “Waal, I guess,” his long, pointed beard inclined towards the roof. Another represented three races: Japan, the South Sea and Yankeeland. This mixture had made an argumentative strain. Nor could he help it, however he tried. The three separate emotions of three separate strains would come into forcible conflict during pugnacious arguments—consequently one of his ears was missing.

Yet another represented the Shamrock, the Thistle and the Rose. He had a huge, humorous mouth, merry blue eyes and a high bald head; a head that was a veritable incubator for hatching wildly unprofitable schemes. Ah! schemes that cracked through their shells so easily, just to flutter a little way and fall with broken wings, yes, on their first flight. Sometimes a new-born scheme even fluttered so far as to settle on a twig and sing sweetly for a moment, as though it yearned to express the hopelessness it felt, to write verse on the leaves with its tuneful beak, so that the old beachcombers would cheer with delight as they watched and yell deliriously:

“At last! at last! we’ve struck rich!”—and then it fell—dead at their feet.

In that motley crew was not one true representative of the John Bull type. There’s no denying the fact, but the typical John Bull is too avid of comfort and abnormal self-respect, and all that is conventional, to be found sitting on a tub in a grog shanty in the South Seas. It was even ridiculous to expect to find a true Britisher there. To annex a continent, or even an isle, to explain the religious significance of the annexation, while hiding that renowned smile behind the old red, white and blue John Bull handkerchief, was natural enough; but to find him sitting on an empty salt-beef tub in the South Seas—why, impossible, absurd!

Should he by chance be found there, rest assured it is in some mongrel state: some Britisher with the ravishing strain of the hilarious, inconsequential, romantic Irish; or the Odyssean strain of the Italian cavalier or Spanish hidalgo’s blood pulsing in his veins. Though, stay—there was one, by name Bill Grimes, a representative of the much-abused Cockney.

Men have toiled over the inscrutable wonders of Cockneyism. The short clay pipe, the black teeth, the perky shuffle of vile impertinence and blasphemous oaths have bedecked many a novelist’s pages with inky crime.

Believe me, Bill Grimes was a real out and outer good ’un. It is true enough that he chewed vilely and spat deliberately, so as not to miss, with that streaming certitude of black tobacco juice, when anyone capped his argument with indisputable conviction. But do not men argue the world over? Is it not far better to have a straightforward squirt of honest tobacco juice in one’s eye than life-long, stealthy enmity behind one’s back?

Ah, Bill Grimes (he’s dead now), the blue of your eyes was not counterfeit; your heart and voice had the genuine touch and true ring of the last half-crown you so often shared.

Yes, there he sits; what a face!—more like a half-worn-out broom, with two clear, sparkling eyes peeping from it, than anything else. A real “low ’un”—and yet his mouth, sensitive-looking, firm as a beautiful woman’s, as though ages back in British history some Roman captain, leader of invading legions, sighted and fell into the arms of a blue-eyed, golden-haired coster-girl, of leafy raiment and limbs of woaded beauty, as she pattered down that primitive Mile End Way.

As Grimes sat there on his tub, he gave them back as good as they gave when they chaffed him. He was no fool. His old grandfather and grandmother kept a pawnbroker’s shop down the Old Kent Road. He seemed to have tender memories of them and his kiddie days.

“Gorblimy, a dear old soul she were. She knewed all about Boyron the poyet; yes, she readed to me the poultry that made me wanter go to sea.”

“Fancy that,” said I, as I looked into those fine, low eyes.

“Yus; and I’m well connected, mate, I am. I had a hunkle on the Karnty Kouncil.” (Here he pulled his trouser-legs up and spat through the open door with mathematical precision.) “Clever bloke ’e was.”

So would Grimes ramble on, telling me of old times, and of his first aspirations to go to sea, in his picturesque style, till I saw, in my imagination, the wrinkled old grandmother staring through her spectacles as the little grimy imp looked up at her and drank in the romance of life.