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University of California • Berkeley

From the library

of
James D. Hart

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HARBOURS OF
MEMORY

Books by William McFee

ALIENS

AN OCEAN TRAMP

CAPTAIN MACEDOINE'S DAUGHTER

CASUALS OF THE SEA

HARBOURS OF MEMORY

PORT SAID MISCELLANY

HARBOURS OF
MEMORY

BY
WILLIAM McFEE

GARDEN CITY, N. Y., AND TORONTO

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1921

COPYRIGHT, 1920, 192 1, BY

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION

INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

COPYRIGHT, I918, I919. 1920, I92I, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, I9I9, BY HARPER & BROTHERS

COPYRIGHT, I919, 1920, I92I, BY GEO. H. DORAN COMPANY

PRINTED AT GARDEN CITY, N. Y,, U. S. A.
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS

First Edition

TO
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY

MY FIRST PILOT
INTO THE PORTS OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM

DEDICATION

My dear Chris:

At last the moment is come when I can sit down
and address you in the full consciousness of a perfect
milieu. The ship is at rest in a tropical port, all
the passengers are ashore enjoying their brief
respite from steam-heated apartments, solidly
packed subways, and an atrocious city government
controlled by a corrupt oligarchy of professional
politicians (by the way, why should an amateur poli-
tician be considered an angel of light and a profes-
sional a son of BeHal?) We have not yet reached
the critical period of the voyage, when the festive
banana comes aboard and causes us much more
anxiety than you or any other cheerful consumer of
it ever imagines. I myself have dined, and the door
of my cabin is locked, to convey the impression to
the careless caller that I am ashore. I have, in honour
of the occasion, assimilated an immense high-ball,
not merely because I was thirsty and needed a drink,
but as a part of the significant ritual of dedication.
In the immortal words of the London mechanic who
used to rise in the old **free-and-easy" forerunner
of the modern music-hall, to propose the toast of

viii DEDICATION

some already half-inebriated guest, "I looks toward
you, and I likewise cops your eye."

For it is entirely right and proper that I should
dedicate to you this collection of fugitive pieces
written from time to time as editors and inspiration
called, and to which I have given the fanciful name
of "Harbours of Memory" incorporating in one
phrase two of the most beautiful words in the English
tongue. It is entirely right and proper because
to you I owe my real initiation into the ranks of
what one witty American journalist has called the
I. W. W. — the Industrious Writers of the World.
To you I owe the encouragement so necessary to
the timid soul about to put out upon the wide seas
of American literature. To you I owe a most gener-
ous and (in my own private opinion) extremely
biassed enthusiasm for my work. To you I owe
my present amiable connections with American
publishers. As Sir James Barrie once said of
Frederick Greenwood, **He invented me," so I
might point accusingly at you (let us say at Andre's
in a full session of the Three-Hours-for-Lunch Club)
and exclaim, "This man resuscitated me." For
it is only the truth to say that when, in Port Said
of blessed memory, I first received a letter from you,
I was in a state of suspended animation.

I say suspended animation because, as I am about
to confess to you, my first connection with journaHsm
took place exactly twenty-three years ago, the year

DEDICATION ix

I left school. I often wonder what would have been
my career had that first connection proved solid
and durable, and had I abandoned, after the manner
of geniuses in novels, the profession into which I
was being inducted. A fine theme for a novel! I
would have worked for some years on the small-town
paper, contributed occasionally by stealth (vide
Dickens and Barrie) to the metropolitan press,
attained a certain local notoriety by my radical
political opinions, and possibly I should have been
patronized by Sir Robertson Nichol or some other
imposing literary mandarin, and become the per-
petrator of a few volumes of piffling preciosity in
the manner of Arthur Christopher Benson or the
late Dixon Scott.

You shudder; but such were my temperament and
leanings at that time had they not been corrected
by a healthy plunge into a world of callous operatives,
energetic executives, and highly fascinating machin-
ery. When I walk through Greenwich Village and
become the amused victim of some member of the
very advanced intelligentsia, fitted with tortoise-
shell glasses, a muffled exhaust and a fixed contempt
for everything American, I say to myself, "There,
but for the grace of God, go I."

Had that first experiment in journalism succeeded;
but it did not. It was this way.

Young authors in America to-day, when they
turn up their noses at the authors of our day in

X DEDICATION

England, must remember that we had ndne of their
advantages. Authorship was not only a trade
secret, it was one of the holy mysteries. Arnold
Bennett had not then written his book on "How
to Become an Author." The ready writers were
the bosses of the whole literary show. They be-
came editors and dictated the fashion of the hour.
They set a genius like Barry Pain writing ridiculous
serials and men like George Moore writing absurd
articles which no unscrupulous publisher will ever
want to reprint. Messrs. Pain and Moore are
offered as examples of a disastrous policy because
they have survived the tyrannical and short-sighted
despots who ruled London and provincial journalism
for so long and made the English magazine what it
is to-day — a soggy and amorphous affair with neither
individual character nor universal appeal.

Put broadly, then, one can say that in those days
of the 'nineties, there was practically no market for
the young save the precarious foothold obtainable
by what was called free-lance journalism. Articles
written by experts for popular journals invariably
suggested this as the first rung in the ladder. You
saw a droll incident in the street and wrote a short
article and sent it in. On your way to mail it you
saw a man thrown out of a hansom cab, saw him
removed to the hospital, obtained his name and ad-
dress and rushed the news into the office at top speed.
Coming back you took your tea at a bakery, and

DEDICATION xi

put the waitress through the third degree in order
to write an article on "How the Poor Live." Or
you might get an idea for a story out of her. In
time you were able to make about as much per week
as one of my coal-passers earns per day. What
was happening to your soul was not considered.
By a singular good fortune I avoided anything of
this sort until my soul was a thoroughly seasoned
article. Many years later, happening to be in
London while Crippen, the notorious murderer, was
being sought all over Europe, I sat down and wrote
an article called "How to Get Out of the Country,"
rushed it to the office in Fleet Street, and on the
following Thurdsay morning received two pounds
in gold. Later, an unusual case of over-insurance
of ships came into prominence, and I immediately
filled the breach with an article called "How to Sink
a Ship," for which I received another two pounds in
gold. It was good sport and did nobody any harm;
but as a training in literature I consider it about
the worst possible.

Indeed, I take the opportunity here of saying,
because I know you will thump the bar with your
tankard in hearty agreement, that the best training
for literature until one is well over twenty-five
is to have nothing to do with it. It is, in short,
a misuse of words to speak of a training for literature
in the sense that a brass-finisher, an automobile
salesman, or a monumental mason is trained. We

xii DEDICATION

are fond of saying that writing is a trade, whereas
we know that it is nothing of the sort, that the
essence of it is not to be determined by the laws of
supply and demand, and that one has to make fine
and accurate adjustments with life in order to
preserve one's soul ahve and at the same time con-
vince the purveyors of our personalities that the
labourer is worthy of his hire.

However, to return to my early struggles, as
the biographies say, I one day suddenly desisted
from trying to write historical essays like Thomas
Babington Macaulay and wrote a short sketch
describing, with an attempt at humour, our local
commuting train service. I described our train
setting out for the City one morning crowded with
young and old, all cheerful and full of hope. Before
the train reached its destination, the old had died
and been buried beside the track, the young had
grown gray, and the locomotive was standing amid
moss and fern with birds building their nests in
her smokestack. And so on. Broad satire. My
own impression now is that I got the idea from some-
where else; that it was not original. No matter.
What is wanted in free-lance newspaper work is not
originality, but something the editor has never heard
of before — a very different thing.

And as I had been brought up to regard all pub-
lishing and so forth as a distant and awful mystery, I
was too frankly scared of the great London journals

DEDICATION xiii

to send my small manuscript to them. It had,
moreover, a purely local appeal. Now the local
paper which came to the house was the product
of changing times. The great railroad had been
driven a few years before through the very strong-
holds of feudalism. It tunnelled under forests
where Norman barons and Tudor queens had fol-
lowed the chase. It gave one glimpses of country
seats still inviolate, and, a mile or two beyond, black
blotches which were slums of almost incredible
squalor. It roared under an ancient monastery,
and the great trains for the North thundered past
the very portals of the lordly House of Cecil. There
was nothing unusual about this state of affairs, any
more than in my being free to wander all over Hat-
field Park and getting more good of it than the owner,
who was the Prime Minister of England. The only
conditions he made were that I should not torment
his deer nor litter the bracken with paper bags.
Nothing unusual in this. England was still the
most democratic country in the world. But it
had one curious effect on the local newspaper.
It was called the "Barnet Press," but it had a
number of sub-titles, such as Hedon Chronicle^
Hadleigh Recordy and South Mimms Gazette. It
was a large old-fashioned mainsail of a paper with
the inevitable ''patent insides" including a dreary
serial that nobody read. It was the exact duplicate
of hundreds of other papers all over England. It

xiv DEDICATION

had, however, this extraordinary distinction. It
was not only called the Barnet Press, it was owned
and edited by a man named Press — Mr. Truman
Press. And one of the principal of the many ac-
tivities of Mr. Press was the production of county
histories and family records. For fifty guineas
Mr. Press would go into your family affairs and
draw up an authentic precis of your past glories,
print it and bind it in blue leather with your crest
in gold. There were many of our neighbours, of
course, who would have paid more than fifty guineas
to have had their past left unmolested, and others
who were much more anxious to know the future.
Mr. Press, however, had a fair patronage among
the distant houses whose windows flashed ruddy
gold in the setting sun as one walked through south
Hertfordshire. He also catalogued libraries and
prosecuted researches into heraldic lore, supposing
you had a coat of arms and were solicitous concern-
ing the quarterings.

Mr. Press, as you can very well imagine then,
stood for gentility, for law and order, for high Tory
and old port for ever. Unfortunately the southern
end ot our extended suburb was being gradually
built up and congested, and becoming distinctly
low in tone. With no quarterings of their own,
they were prejudiced, in a beery and thoroughly
English way, against those who had. On Saturday
nights they danced outside taverns in the light of

DEDICATION xv

naphtha flares hung from whelk-stalls. Among these
people the Barnet Press, organ of the conservative,
propertied class, had no following. In as far as they
were articulate at all, they were represented by a
pea-green sheet called The Sentinel, a radical organ
affectionately called The Rag, whose editor person-
ally covered cricket and football matches, smoking
concerts and Methodist tea-meetings, and who put
his tongue out, metaphorically, at the Barnet Press
and its aristocratic tone. Mr. Truman Press did
not lie awake at night thinking out replies to the
SentineVs cheap and nasty sneers, but he did form-
ulate a play to cope with the changing times and
population. He saw that while the Sentinel might
speak adequately enough for the artisan and the
clerk in the small semi-detached houses being run
up in scores in Wood Green and Muswell Hill, the
tenants of the villas of Whetstone and East Barnet
would want something different. The result of his
cogitation was a sheet called The Mercury, consisting
almost entirely of local news and reflecting a political
tone slightly more conservative than its imposing
parent, the Press.

And one evening, greatly daring, I put my little
article into a long envelope and addressed it to the
Mercury,

I have been very fortunate throughout my life.
Some kind guardian spirit has ever been at hand to
preserve me from premature prosperity. Here were

xvi DEDICATION

all the ingredients for that very thing. It seemed
as if nothing could save me from being caught up
on the crest of a wave of journalism and being whirled
into Fleet Street and fame. The very next week I
was paralyzed to find my article printed, and an edi-
torial note requesting the author to call. I am
obliged to confess that, had I such a situation to
handle in a story, I should be in desperate straits to
extricate the hero from a successful career in the
newspaper world, terminating in the ownership of
the Times. Nevertheless, the impossible happened.
I failed. So did the Mercury. So did Mr. Truman
Press, for all I know. But first let me tell you how
I succeeded. I set out on my first visit to an editor.
It was, as Mr. Conrad is so fond of saying, an
altogether memorable aflFair. I put on my best
suit, with a button-over collar too high for me, so
that my neck was in torture, and a silk hat. I had
to take the train half way into London, to a junction,
and then take another train as far out again on a
branch line. I can remember the keen spring air
blowing along the elevated wooden platform of that
junction and the foreman porter coming up with
his shining lantern, which showed red, white, or
green as he clicked the button, and calling out in a
clear clarion voice while the train rumbled in:
'* Stroud Green, Crouch End, Highgate, East
Finchley, Finchley, Woodside Park, Totteridge,
and High Barnet! High Barnet train!" I can

DEDICATION xvii

remember it, and how the rush of wind along the
platform made me hold on to my silk hat. A fine,
bustling, cheery place, that junction, with trains
to all sorts of Barnets, to Hatfield, to Hendon, and
Enfield, where Lamb lived; with imposing corridor
trains from Scotland sliding in to have tickets
collected, and interminable sleeping-car trains pound-
ing through on their way up the Northern Heights,
the safety valves lifting and the throttle wide open
as they got into their stride for their two-hundred-
mile non-stop run to Doncaster. A fine place at
all times, even on Sundays, with touring theatrical
folk to make a cheery business of their journey,
and sitting with a great show of lace petticoats
and high kid boots on the tops of milk cans or piles
of theatrical baskets. I can remember all this, I
say, and even the jerk of the start up the long ramp
to Stroud Green, as the foreman porter sang out
musically, "Right Behind! Right Forward!" and
waved his lantern like an enormous emerald to the
engine-driver, and I put my infernal silk hat on
the rack and fell to thinking of what was in store for
me. And yet curiously enough, I have no clear
memory of the all-important interview. I mean,
the thing as I recall it, is all climax, which no editor
would tolerate. Let me think. . . .

Mr. Press was about to attack the new public
of our suburb from a fresh point. Crouch End
was a villa locality, but enterprising builders had

xviii DEDICATION

begun what is called, for some reason, a parade.
A parade is a street of stores with apartments over
them, with wide sidewalks and electric trolley
cars running down the centre of the way. Mr.
Truman Press had an office in this very new parade,
upstairs over a bakery restaurant. Or rather I
imagine he lived there, and a green baize office
table with a typewriter was the office. From his
window he could see the crowds outside the Crouch
End Opera house, a legitimate theatre, where
Marion Terry was once more creating the part of
Mrs. Erlynne in Wilde's comedy, "Lady Winder-
mere's Fan." I stumbled up a dark staircase in
the wake of a scornful creature with a dab of white
cambric on her head as her haughty badge of service
and was ushered into the presence of Mr. Truman
Press.

He was tall and had a beard neatly trimmed, and
he addressed me, I can remember now, as if I were
a public meeting. This did not prevent him being
very much amused, privately, at his new contrib-
utor, and I discovered, as I hunted for a place
to put my hat, that there was a lady in the room.
She was seated at a smaller table somewhat out of
the light of the large oil lamp on the green baize
table. She was dark, and I am ready to swear that
she was extremely handsome. About thirty, I
should say, so that now she is fifty-three, a very
terrible thought indeed. She looked across at me

DEDICATION xix

in a most engaging and delightful way, while Mr.
Press looked at the very new ceiling, where a few
electric wires had come inadvertently through a hole
and seemed to be contorted in a frantic attempt
to turn back and hide. He looked up at this new
ceiling and spoke eloquently of the pleasure my
article had given him. The beautiful lady nodded
her assent and my ridiculous mind, instead of being
intent on the business in hand, as Mr. Arnold
Bennett's would have been, was already busy
weaving a romance in which this adorable creature
was queen. Mr. Press informed the electric wires
that he thought a little article on these lines would
be the very thing each week. Treat local news in a
humorous way. I undoubtedly — ah — had a certain
gift in that direction, which might — ah — prove
quite a valuable acquisition.

It was about this time that I gathered that the
beautiful lady was the actual editor of the paper
to which I was to contribute. Or am I mistaking
the story I afterward tried to write, in which the
brilliant contributor offered his heart, hand, and
pen to the lady-editor, for the facts. I am not sure.
As I told you just now, I am hazy about the first
part of that interview. Writing an autobiography
must be an awful business. And in this particular
instance I am obsessed with the magnitude of the
climax. Brand-new electric cars rumbled outside
the brand-new windows of the Parade. There was

XX DEDICATION

a junction in the trolley wires just in front of the
house, and from where I sat on the edge of my chair,
still looking for a safe place for my hat, and listening
to Mr. Press addressing the wires as though com-
municating to a distant branch of my family what
he thought of me, I would wait for the trolley to
jump that junction and emit a fat blue responsive
spark. Mr. Press would say that he was agreeably
surprised to find literary talent in the neighbourhood,
and the trolley would go ''phutt!" in hearty agree-
ment. Mr. Press was sorry he could not offer a
very high honorarium, as the paper was not yet on a
paying basis; and the trolley would echo **phutt!*'
indeed not! The house trembled a little as the
traffic increased. People were going home and other
people were going out for the evening. The unanim-
ity with which the trolley agreed with Mr. Press
was beginning to numb my intelligence, but I re-
tained sufficient presence of mind to inquire the
amount of the honorarium. Mr. Press looked
hard at the wires in the ceiling, rubbed the point
of his beard as though to see if it had been singed,
and repHed that he would be happy to give me a
check for. . . .

At this moment the end of the world seemed to
arrive, for the ceiling around the wires suddenly
became convex, broke, split, and fell with a frightful
crash, demolishing the lamp and leaving us in
darkness.

DEDICATION xxi

A trolley rumbled past, said *Thutt!'* and disap-
peared.

In recent days, in England, the explosion of
bombs in the streets, the fall of roofs, and the very
actual wrecking of homes so that horse-hair sofas
have been found in neighbouring yards and anti-
macassars ruined beyond repair, have all become
so common that only the final disaster of sudden
death seemed to call for comment. In the 'nineties,
however, we had not discovered how very heroic
we could be. A cloud of dust from the plaster
which presently began to settle on our clothes and
deposit itself in our eyes, ears, and noses, seemed
to be the only rpaterial damage we had suffered,
for on candles being brought by the haughty domestic
even my hat had escaped, and the typewriter, lying
amid large slabs of ceiling, was unharmed. The
lady, of course, was pale but very brave, and the
haughty maid was immediately dispatched, at top
speed, to the nearest tavern for sixpennyworth
of brandy as an infallible restorative for shattered
nerves.

I need hardly say that it would have been the limit
of tactlessness to attempt any further discussion
of terms. Whatever honorarium Mr. Press had
had in mind to offer, it was evidently displeasing
to the gods. Perhaps it was on this account that>
after contributing a half-column per week for four
weeks, I received a check for the princely sum of one

xxii 7 DEDICATION

pound. I have at times had disquieting thoughts on
this subject. Even now, after twenty-three years^
I am far from decided whether I would have re-
ceived more, or less, had not the heavens fallen.
You can see by this story that my induction into
literature was full of omens, good and evil. The
point, however, is not that I waxed rich or even
that I afterward failed to spin from my own entrails
the required shimmering tissue of satin satire for a
weekly half column in a neighbourhood which was
really only a large dormitory for tired business men.
The point, the radiant asterisk in my life, is that I
began to cover a sheet of paper without being actually
aware of the passing of time. For the first time
I sat down night after night, to the detriment of my
studies in engineering, and wrote page after page of
entirely worthless fiction. Do not be alarmed,
however. I am not on the brink of telling you that
this was the happiest time in my life. It was not.
The artist in his teens who is happy is a charlatan.
Life comes bursting in all around us too suddenly,
too crudely, too cruelly, for happiness. The young
artist who is worth his salt knows, and oh the agony
of it! that his prolific outpourings are only the clumsy
imitation of a prentice hand. No, it was the un-
happiest time of a fairly happy life, I think, for
it is a bitter experience when one offers everything
to a goddess and she turns her face away.

It is rather a solemn thought, too, that her face

DEDICATION xxiii

remained obscure for ten years. Ten industrious
silent years, a sort of Wilhelm Meister's Apprentice-
ship, during which I served my turn as artisan,
draftsman, salesman, and seafarer. Looking back,
one is constrained to marvel at the extreme confi-
dence with which one watches the priceless and
irreplaceable years go by. Life seems long and art
short when one is young. Perhaps it is best so,
for there is a touch of tragedy about the modern
middle-aged artist with his fine gift for expression
hampered by a faulty inadequate equipment.

But I need not remind you that we now live in an
age somewhat different from the Arcadian simplicity
I have been describing, an age in which an inade-
quate equipment is no bar to any of the professions,
an age in which unscrupulous swindlers angle for the
money of simpletons by proclaiming the ridiculous
facility with which art, law, medicine, and literature
can be mastered, an age in which every other young
lady is taking a course of short-story writing or
scenario-drafting, or advertising. This is our age,
and we must five in it. We must accept it, and
with it one of its most momentous and significant
features — the modern editor.

Has it occurred to you that the subject of edi-
tors has never been courageously handled by au-
thors.? I am aware the subject is full of difficulties
because by the time a man has reached a posi-
tion which justifies him to speak with authority

xxiv DEDICATION

he has estabHshed so many pleasant relations with
certain editors (cunning men!) that he is content to
let the others stew in their own juice. But this is
only begging the question after all. To the artist
all subjects are legitimate copy — and this includes
editors. Shall a man refrain from writing critically
of women because he loves his wife? However,
realizing the reluctance of the novice and the wealthy
alike to disturb the editors in their lairs, I step nobly
into the breach.

The fact is many editors have permitted their
enthusiasm to run away with them. This became
markedly manifest during the Great War. (I
specify which war I mean because outside of my
window in this tropical port, I hear the tramp ot
armed men, the legions of Costaragua going up in
their harness against the path of the neighbouring
republic of Contigua.) Editors felt they must
stimulate at all costs the pens of those in the field.
They succeeded beyond the most sanguine expecta-
tions. Articles, poems, and novels were written
under fire. Lyrics were penned in mid-air, and odes
in submarines. We suffered temporarily from an
embarrassment of riches. Young ladies in naval
transport offices planned fictions beyond the dreams
of Bronte or Mrs. Gaskell, and I myself have come
suddenly upon a naval captain waiting to see a
literary agent and looking very sheepish about it.
The thing became a joke and one foresaw a comic

DEDICATION xxv

rearrangement of the future, when the authors
would outnumber readers and editors would commit
suicide in droves.

I say the thing became a joke; but alas! it was a
joke taken all too seriously by many of the young
authors thus ruthlessly dragged into premature
publication. They could not see that the war
was not going to last for ever. They could not see
that when hostilities ceased and the inevitable re-
action came, it would no longer be possible to inflict
their amateur performances upon a sickened public.
Particularly was this so with the poets. It is the
one thing I cannot bring myself to forgive the
editors, this bolstering up of false hopes of a public
for poetry. It was cruel, it was almost wicked.
These young bards should have been put quickly
out of their misery. For the war was their sole
inspiration. Now we are so sick of war that we
are ready to fight anybody who proposes it (if the
bull will pass) they are wondering what is the matter
with them. Not only is their poetry no longer in
demand — they are no longer able to sing. Let us
take, as a concrete and illuminating example, our
mutual friend, young Sniff'kins, the Oxford man who
was over here not so long ago. You will remember
that in 1914 he joined up straight from the univer-
sity, got a commission, and was soon in the thick
of things in France. And he began to write. Or
rather he had found a subject. It was all so very

XX vi DEDICATION

new to him. Life outside of his own little upper-
class circle was a novelty to SnifFkins, I imagine.
There was something really quaint in the splendid
way the men took their hardships. They were
English, of course. Had he gone to work instead
of to Oxford, or better still, had he gone to sea, he
would have found that men, whether English or
Chinese, Latin or Slav, are extremely lovable, admir-
able and staunch and the most interesting creatures
on earth. But the very newness of it all was an
asset, and he began to sing. He wrote fine little
poems and they were printed. Later they were
collected and had a notable sale in book form. The
war went on and SnifFkins wrote more and more.
I think he had four volumes of collected verse when
his American publishers suggested a visit. The
armistice provided an opportunity, SnifFkins got
leave and came over on a lecture tour. He was
"one of our coming writers." Pugson, the lecture
agent, got him really very good terms, for we were
in the middle ot the Great Spending Era, the Silk-
Shirt Age, and while our workmen were paying
ridiculous prices for sumptuous underwear, our
intellectuals were putting their minds into all sorts
of expensive and fancy suitings. SnifFkins came,
was photographed and interviewed, and I am rather
afraid New York made him a httle dizzy. We
were exporting Russian Reds and importing Oxford
Blues in those days, you will remember, and doing

DEDICATION xxvii

both with enthusiasm. A young Englishman, whose
travels had been limited to the Western Front,
could not be expected to assay accurately the highly
specialized atmosphere in which he found himself.
It did not occur to him that he was not really a
representative English author, that in London he
was practically unknown or that apart from the
war he had done nothing. It did not strike him
as odd that neither Kipling nor Conrad nor Robert
Bridges were prancing about the United States
exhibiting themselves as representative British au-
thors. He had no time. Between Pugson and his
publishers he was too fully occupied to think. He
dined in clubs in Gramercy Park and met a large
number of people who specialize in welcoming
visiting lions. He gained not the slightest insight
into American life because he had no time. He
lectured very well, I beheve, though of course his
reading was tar from extensive, owing to his early
enlistment. There was a certain rise in the sales
of his books and things looked very rosy. American
women have an intoxicating way of making you
think they are genuinely interested in literature
and also in your own temperament. It is their
shining gift, fatal to visiting poets. They are not
interested in literature, of course, as you know —
only in making an effective pose. Fortunately
for SnifFkins he did not stay long and when he
boarded the steamer for Liverpool he was in a mood

xxviii DEDICATION

to bless America very heartily. There was no
doubt about it — he would continue to write.

But writing when you are an officer, drawing
officer's pay and Hving in the mess, and writing
for a living as a civilian, turned out to be quite
different affairs. I wonder, by the way, what has
become of Sniffkins. I saw one or two poems in
different magazines, an article on the Modern Trend

Toward Free Verse in a review, and well, that's

about all. I am inclined to think he took that job
in his uncle's wine business after all. But I imagine
he did some very thorough thinking in the interval,
getting it definitely into his system that the war was
over and that authorship, like every other art,
cannot be conquered in a week. And what would
he write about anyhow, now his one subject stinks
in men's nostrils? He knows nothing. He has
read, comparatively, nothing. His tin-pot poems,
compared with the mighty works of real poets
like Swinburne, Rosetti, Morris, and Kipling, are
equivalent to the traditional hill of beans. His
lecturetour must be a peculiar memory for him
nowadays. . . .

And you know, it was all the fault of those editors.
Fame is heady stuff, and Sniffkins was made squiffy
with it. Instead of getting his adversity first and his
prosperity by gradual degrees, he had the process
reversed. And with all due respect to the editors,
an author is not a race-horse or a professional

DEDICATION xxix

pugilist. The great thing to do with an author is to
let him alone. I feel sometimes like writing a new
declaration of independence for authors. I feel
like saying, in a loud voice, ''Leave me alone.
Keep away with that auto-suggestion business. I
have all sorts of ideas in my head that you are not
aware of, and with your permission I want to enjoy
them myself before I work them out. I know
perfectly well that I am indolent, but that is the
inalienable right of all artists. Otherwise we might
as well be artisans and punch the clock at eight a. m.
every morning." And there is always this infallible
argument, that even if a man only writes a thousand
words a day, he will have written three hundred
and sixty thousand words in a year, which is a hun-
dred and fifty-thousand too many!

And that reminds me that there are already too
many words in this dedication, though a good argu-
ment might be made out that dedications do not
count, and that a man should have the privilege to
ramble on as long as he likes. It is certainly a cap-
tivating department of literature and one might easily
form the habit of writing books merely as appendages
to one's dedications. For how many books should
a man write? I for one beheve he should write
one for each of his friends, one for his mother, one
for his wife, and, if he be one of those extravagantly
emotional beings who provide so much amusement
for their friends nowadays, one for his mistress as

XXX DEDICATION

well. I would even permit him one more so that
he could dedicate it to his publishers, and it would
be a worthy deed.

Here, then, I offer you, in token of my undiminished
esteem, these Harbours of Memory. Neither you
nor I have been able to run our minds into the con-
ventional, snappy, short-story mould of the modern
arsenals of fictions. While you write too much and I
too little for our own good, we are, both of us, the
despair of those estimable and idealistic fellows,
the editors of "red-blooded magazines for he-men,"
who are for ever galloping about, looking for stories
with "action" and "plot," with "punch" and "pep,"
and a long list of other stimulating qualities. Not
that we lose sleep over it. It is the artist's pre-
rogative to be immune from the toilsome worries
of industrious compilers. You cannot down him,
for his joy is within himself. All men pay tribute
to his whimsy, which can never be isolated by the
synthetic process or reduced to fine gray powder
by the most subtle electric analysis. Even editors
are the delighted victims of his elfish fancies. So
we lose no sleep. You add each day to the gaiety
of the nations from your office in Vesey Street, while
I slip down through the Narrows into open sea.

William McFee.
S. S. Santa Maria
March, 1921.

CONTENTS

PAGB

Harbours of Memory i

The Crusaders 22

The City of Enchantment 68

A New Method of Reviewing Books .... 92

On a Balcony 112

The Shining Hour 132

Knights and Turcopoliers 147

Some Good but Insufficient Reasons for Silence 208

The Idea 226

Lost Adventures 238

The Market 246

Race 252

The Artist Philosopher 278

A Port Said Miscellany 293

HARBOURS OF MEMORY

As I follow my old friend and shipmate along the
dockside and across the narrow gangway to the
deck, someone pulls the lanyard on the bridge,
and the whistle, clearing its throat with a gurgle
of condensation and covering us in a fine spray,
bursts into a hoarse bellow that reverberates against
the tall, stark warehouses, with their wet roofs?
dingy windows, and projecting cranes, and seems
to vocalize, in a very epigrammatic manner, the
clean, cold sharpness of the spring day, the brisk
bustle of business, and the energy of the easterly
wind that is drying up the puddles between the
tracks on the quay and sending the exhaust steam
from the winches in feathery swirls round the flapping
red ensign on the poop. The carpenter is hammering
home the wedges that batten down the hatch tar-
paulins, and the second officer, an old badge-cap
on his head and dilapidated double-breasted uniform
coat buttoned up to his chin, is superintending the
lowering of the cargo-derricks.

Laden with heavy portmanteaus and followed by a
ragged, knock-kneed, shifty-eyed gentleman bearing
a large canvas sea-bag on his shoulder, we pass

1

2 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

along a narrow alleyway and enter a small cabin
over the door of which is a shining brass plate marked
Chief Engineer. We deposit our burdens, and
the shifty-eyed one, who takes one or two swift
and all-embracing glances about the room, with a
view to some possible future enterprise, is paid off
and escorted out on deck. My friend murmurs
something about ** seeing the Old Man" and goes
out, leaving me in the semi-darkness of the cabin.
There is no electric light on this ship, for she is one
of the old tramps which ploughed the ocean in the
days before dynamos were cheap or wireless com-
pulsory. A sturdy, two-decked, schooner-rigged,
single-screw contraption, with wide hatches, accom-
modation amidships, and no patents. A comforta-
ble ship. I can feel the railway-rep upholstery of the
settee, and the walls gleam white as the enamel
reflects the light that eludes the green silk curtains
of the ten-inch window. I get up and strike a
match to light the shining brass lamp that swings
on its gimbals by the bunkside. Many a mess-
room boy has rubbed industriously at that lamp
as he looked curiously at the books on the shelf
just above it. Now the lamp is alight, I can see
them, a double row of heterogeneous volumes from
** Breakdowns at Sea,'' to Robert Browning's "Pippa
Passes"; from naive sensuality to naked wisdom. I
take down a book — neither sensual nor wise — and,
sitting again on the settee, wedged between the

HARBOURS OF MEMORY 3

sea-bag and a portmanteau, I open the book and
for a short while lose myself in its pages.

And it is not very long before we are outside,
going down the Estuary in the sunlight, pass the low-
lying shores with churches and mansions and fac-
tories in the dim distance, past the ruddy-sailed
wherries tacking up toward Gravesend, past the
tall liners from Australia and China coming in on
the tide, past dingy colliers from the North and long
black meat-ships from the Argentine. Past all
these, until the shores fall away and leave us alone
on the gray-green tumbling water and we begin to
feel the motion of the ship, and we go in to arrange
our dunnage in the drawers, and write up our logs
and plan the work of the coming days. And among
the dunnage there will be books, to while away the
longs hours of the watch below, which isn't ** below"
at all nowadays, only we keep to the phrase for
the sake of the days of sail gone by. There is a
pleasure unknown to the landsman in reading at sea,
and you may know the experienced seafarer by
the stock he purchases in the store where they sell
chronometers, sextants, and nautical almanacs,
besides books and pencils and writing-blocks and
tag-labels for baggage. Such stores cater for all
of us, from the skipper who likes fiction which is
certainly r^ot meat for babes, to the mess-room
boy who follows Nick Carter through thick and
thin, volume after volume of thrilling adventure.

4 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

They cater for the grave-eyed, ruddy-faced appren-
tice who desires greatly to improve himself; who feels
inarticulately enough, that he is missing something
his brother at college is getting, and buys serious
books in a pathetic endeavour to fit himself for
that splendid command with which his boyish
fancy is occasionally preoccupied.

Midway between the earnest student who uses
books to rise in the world, and the blase patron
of debilitating fiction, to whom reading is a narcotic,
you find most of us who take books to sea. As
the ship ploughs her way southward toward Gibral-
tar— for we passed St. Catherine's Point some time
ago — so I plough my way, horizontal in the bunk,
the silk curtains drawn over the little scuttle, the
bright, brass gimbal-lamp swaying to the gentle
motion of the ship, through Gibbon's majestic
volumes. The very uselessness of so huge a mass of
magnificent information gives an added charm to a
jaded seaman. One reads only to enjoy, as one
imagines men of vast wealth and ancient lineage
adding luster to their names by a dignified patronage
of the arts. For we are, after all, wealthy in experi-
ence and the tradition of our calling, and the litera-
ture of politics and sociology and commerce makes no
appeal to us. The somber realism of modern human
documents leaves us cold. What we desire above
all is colour and a grandiose conception of human
life. We want barbaric splendour portrayed against

HARBOURS OF MEMORY 5

backgrounds and amid scenes of ravishing beauty.
It is true we often do not know where to find all this-
We go astray, led into trivial blind alleys of deleteri-
ous sensualism by some lurid wrapper or pinch-
beck reputation. But Gibbon is the real thing.
Day after day, chapter by chapter, the narrative
rolls on, the orderly rhythm of the day's toil and
repose weaving harmoniously into the complex
texture of the story, until the Ligurian mountains
above the marble city of Genoa stand sharp against
the dawn, and the tall lighthouse guides us into our
berth against the breakwater, to which a ladder is
let down from the poop, and along which in due
course we shall go ashore.

For once in harbour, of course. Gibbon is put
away. There is a time for everything, and it is
emphatically not time for grandiose historians
when one can go ashore. The mood changes. Ada,
for instance, would not harmonize, with the "De-
cline and Fall." No one can imagine Ada either
declining or falling. She comes aboard with her
little leatherette case of sample bottles of Ligurian
wine on her arm, seats herself beside me on the settee,
and regales us with a joyous version of the gossip
of the port. Ada was a very pretty girl in her teens,
which was not so long ago. Her deep-blue eyes,
tawny hair, pink cheeks, and voluptuous modelling
remind one of the coloured illustrations in a Christ-
mas supplement. Her nose is delicious, and when

6 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

she throws her head back to laugh, showing two
rows of big white teeth, it is infectious. She is a
formidable example of virtue vociferously trium-
phant. She invites us all to go up to her little
place and have supper before coming on board.
We accept with enthusiasm, and Ada, repacking her
absurd sample bottles of wine, which looks like red
ink and probably is, announces her intention of
going up to say "chin-chin" to the Captain before
stepping ashore.

We meet her again later in the Galleria Mazzini,
where is a bookstore and a shop where you can
buy the pipes and tobacco EngUshmen love. She
suggests a drink in the Orpheum, and into the
Orpheum we go — a long room lined with little tables,
waiters hurrying about with miraculously balanced
trays of drinks, and an orchestra of young girls
perched high up half way along. The tables are
crowded; but Ada, magnificently attired in blue
velvet and nodding plumes, leads us to a corner,
where a waiter produces additional chairs, apparently
from his sleeves, and sweeps a score or so of empty
glasses into oblivion. Ada, seated with her back
to the wall, beams upon us and takes my book
to examine it. She says it is good. She had read
and likes it, which is probable enough, it being
D'Annunzio's "Contessa di Amalfi." Ada comes
from the country near Pescara. She tells me to
get "The Sea-Doctor" as well. Over "The Knead-

HARBOURS OF MEMORY 7

ing Trough," which seems to be untranslatable, she
says she has cried. It was from Rimini, sun-dried
relic of the past, that she went to Bologna, and under
the dusky arches of that old town met her dear
Settimo, who travelled in wines. Settimo had am-
bitions toward ship-chandleiing and settled in
Genoa, which suits Ada, who likes life. By life
Ada means, I fancy, happiness, for she is a joyous
soul. If she could only have a baby her cup would
be full. So far that is denied her. The last time
I was here there was much talk of Ada having a
baby, but just before we sailed Ada herself, accom-
panied by Settimo and her inevitable sample-case,
came on board and told us it was all a mistake and
they hoped for better luck next time. Of course
Settimo does travel in wines, and makes a fair living
without ship-chandlering, which requires more capi-
tal than he can command yet. He is a dried-up
httle man with black eyes twinkling on either side
of his sharp nose, and he wears a small tuft between
chin and lip that imparts dignity and which he is
always disturbing with his thumb and finger. He
has a striking resemblance to the foreign count in a
film drama. He says things, too, which I cannot
catch, but which send Ada into shouts of laughter.
After a drink or two we go up there, high up among
mysterious streets which defy any charting in one's
mind. We only know that if we keep on going
down-hill we shall eventually reach the harbour. As

8 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

we leave the Orpheum, Ada waves her glove amiably
, to one or two of the hahituees and they wave back.
She is sorry for them. I wish the phrase "easy
virtue" had not been assigned so sinister a particular-
ity of meaning, for it would otherwise describe Ada
exactly. She is virtuous and it sits easily upon her.
Without being at ease in Zion, she has a delightful
charity and breadth of view. As we go out into the
Piazza di Ferrari we pass a horrible old bag of bones
who apparently has been flung in a corner of an
archway with one cadaverous claw extended. Ada
demands a lira from one of us, and, on receiving it,
puts it in the cadaverous claw, which is thus gal-
vanized into movement, for it withdraws into the
bag of bones and protrudes again slowly, empty.

If there are no babies, Ada's home is full of com-
pensation. Most of them have four legs, and include
two cats, black and white, four kittens highly camou-
flaged, and a poodle of imposing presence and ad-
vanced age. Other compensations have two legs
and live in cages — ^the canaries by the window; the
parrot, who immediately asks us if we want a cigar,
want a cigar, want a cigar, by the sewing-machine
behind the door. Others, again, have no legs at all,
and swim round 'and round in a large bowl upon
which the canaries drop seeds and pieces of cake.
All save the last — and, whatever naturalists may
say, goldfish are not demonstrative in their affec-
tions— are made much of; and the parrot, on being

HARBOURS OF MEMORY 9

offered a cigarette, alludes to his grandmother and
utters a piercing shriek. Ada's furniture is very
Victorian and is particularly rich in antimacassars,
wool mats, fretwork brackets with satin backs,
plush frames, and tinsel balls on elastic strings.
As the Second Engineer remarks, it is a home from
home, for your seafaring man appreciates snugness.
If there were any doubt about Ada's virtue, one
look into her parlour would dispel it for ever. One
look at Settimo, sitting by the table with the poodle
at his knee and a long, thin cigar in his fingers, would
make one wonder how it had ever been entertained.
On the walls are Settimo's parents, life-size, in gilt
frames. Opposite are the inevitable Garibaldi and
Vittorio Emmanuele. On the mantel is the inevita-
ble model of a ship in a bottle, the ebony elephants
with celluloid tusks, and a money-box in the form
of a wine-cask. Ada bustles out and helps a diminu-
tive daughter of Italy in a black apron to bring in
the supper, which consists of fried mullet, spaghetti
served in oval dishes, a sort of pudding made of
rice, dried fruit, hard-boiled eggs, minced veal and
curry, artichokes served with olive oil, and one or
two other things none of us shows any desire to
investigate. Ada makes coffee, and the big flask
of Asti on its plated swing-bracket is well patronized.
We all take a gallon or two away with us when we
leave Genoa. Settimo has a joke about his wine,
which, he says, does not travel far. He means we

lo HARBOURS OF MEMORY

never give it a chance. A copy of the Corriere delta
Sera is spread on the rug and the cats forgather
radially round the mullet bones. The poodle,
somewhat too large for the crowded room, insinuates
his weirdly tonsured person among our knees.

Ada regales us with items of interest in her world.
So-and-so is dead. So-and-so, junior, has married
and gone to America. A friend of hers, a domestic
in a big house in the Via Carlo Dolci, has just won
a thousand lire in the lottery. She is going to
Ventimiglia to visit her aunt. The Second wants
to know if she is good-looking. "Siysi!" responds
Ada, and the parrot adds with deafening corrobora-
tion, "Siy si, Maria!" and gives the poodle a look
of piercing inquiry. Yes, indeed, asserts Ada,
flapping her napkin at the bird, as we might have
seen had we been up the previous evening. The
Second, much agitated, desires an introduction if the
lady is yet unengaged.

**0h, go on with you!" says Ada, throwing her
head back to laugh, and the parrot, with a perfect
torrent of shrieks, hangs upside down on his perch
until, finding no one taking the slightest notice of
him, he readjusts himself and attends to his neglected
toilet. What, go after a poor girl's money in that
shameless manner! Ada is shocked at the cal-
culating villainy of the Second. Besides, she has a
sweetheart. The Second slumps back in his chair
and assumes a look of despondency. He says

HARBOURS OF MEMORY ii

that ever thus from childhood's hour he'd seen his
fairest hopes decay. Settimo, examining his long,
thin cigar, as is his way when about to enunciate
something in English, remarks that the Second has a
tender heart. The Second sighs with his eyes
turned toward the ceiling, and admits the soft
impeachment. Always had, from a child. The
first time he met Ada he was smitten on the spot.
Took to drink when he found she was married. Tried
to drown dull care in three litres of the best chianti.
Care still coming to the surface, was finally disposed
of in a pint of rum.

So the talk goes on, and I fall to wondering how
it is that, in the Hterature of the Latin nations, the
Englishman is always cast for the part of a rather
passionless stick, a dullard, an unobservant fool.
I suppose it is because we have been chiefly repre-
sented abroad by those embodiments of dignity
and self-conscious smugness — the governing classes.
Young milord, doing the grand tour, taking with
him his servants and horses and carriages and a
clerical governor, for ever reminded of his majestic
destiny as a ruler of England, fresh from one of those
intellectual cold-storages, the English public schools,
is largely responsible for this tragic misconception
of our character. To read a novel of France or
Italy with an Englishman in it, one would imagine
us destitute not only of wit, but of humour and all
human kindliness. In that Corriere delta Sera on

12 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

the floor is a serial in which one of the characters is
an Enghshman in Rome, a most lugubrious English-
man. He is, of course, the conventional heavy
Englishman, just as in England we have the con-
ventional frog-eating French schoolmaster and the
conventional Italian waiter and drawing-master.
The Second, in common with most of the other
young seamen I know, belies this character. . With-
out much culture, he takes the world of sentiment
gaily. The Chief and Second officers, who are
married, are very much the same. The Third
Engineer, not long at sea, listens and joins in the
laughter, which is continuous. This foreign at-
mosphere is novel to him. Once he had rid himself
of the funny English suspicion that every well-
dressed foreign woman is lax in her morals, he will
lose his shyness and carry on with the best of us.
He comes of the happiest class in England — the
lower-middle — the class with the most adaptability
for either good or evil fortune, the keenest brains
and most dexterous hands, the only genuinely
democratic class in England. If Ada were to live
in England, you would find her in this category.
And perhaps, if she does eventually have that baby,
he may turn out to be the genius for whom Italy
is waiting, who will do for Genoa what Dickens did
for London, and reveal to us the teeming life, the
tears and laughter, of that city by the sea.

Not that Italy is without geniuses as yet. I know

HARBOURS OF MEMORY 13

one in particular, and, sure enough, he is down to
the ship the next day. While I am in the engine-
room, discussing a job of work with the Second,
who is extremely dirty and cheerful in spite of his
sentimental misfortunes, the Mate calls down from
the top grating.

"Are you there, Chief.?"

"Aye. What's the trouble?''

"One of these Eyetalians wants to see you.
That young fellow who was aboard last time, you
remember .f^'*

"Oh, all right. Tell him to go into my room.'*

When I go up, a short young gentleman with a
sallow complexion and large, black eyes jumps up
from the settee and bows. This is Mr. Ricardo
Bertola, the genius aforesaid.

"Good morning, Mr. Chief. I saw in the news-
paper your ship was in and I have come to ask you
a question."

"Why certainly! What is it this time? Sit
down."

As usual with Mr. Bertola, it is a word in a book.
He produces the book, which is an edition of Beowulf.
Not satisfied with a good working knowledge of every
language in Europe, including (as the copyrights
say) the Scandinavian; not even happy in his famili-
arity with Greek, Latin, Arabic, Turkish, Persian,
and Sanscrit, Mr. Bertola craves a diploma in EngHsh
literature. Gifted with an exquisite ear, he learns

14 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

most of these tongues by conversation. Our carpen-
ter cannot understand a Dago talking Norwegian
without ever going to Norway. "He spick better
Norwegian dan me!" he admits, in wonderment.
He does, no doubt, for he speaks better Enghsh
than most of us. He has that amazing gift of
tongues which leaves the rest of us dumb. But
when it comes to Old EngHsh, Mr. Bertola is oc-
casionally at a loss. He points out the word
**thegns" and observes that it is not in the diction-
ary. And it so happens that by a miracle of good
fortune I am able to help him. I take down a
pocket Shakespeare and show him a speech an-
nouncing that "the thane of Cawdor lives, a prosper-
ous gentleman." Mr. Bertola seizes it with avidity.

"The same word? How simple! And what is a
thane?"

"Why, see what it says," I answer, pointing:
*'*a prosperous gentleman.' A wealthy yeoman, a
rich farmer."

Oh yes. He is relieved. And how am I getting
on with my Itahan? Not very fast, I admit, not
having Mr. Bertola's aptitude in that direction.

"But ItaHan is easy," he protests, smiling.

"Possibly, but I am rather thick."

"Thick"? Out comes note-book and pencil.
Thick, applied to brains, is a novel word to him,
and he makes a neat note. That is his way. At
lunch, which he shares with us in the messroom, he

HARBOURS OF MEMORY 15

is confounded by substantives like mulligatawny,
piccalilli, and chow-chow, as indeed he is by the
substances; but they go into the note-book all the
same. He begs me to come to his home in the even-
ing and he will give me a lesson in Italian. Which
is very charming of him; but I know those Italian
lessons. The pages of Metastasio or Pascoli lie
open before us, but we talk continally, in English,
of English literature. There has been nothing like
it since the days of Aristophanes, he asserts, and
he ought to know. He picks up a translation of
"The Day's Work," and reads me the story of "The
Ship that Found Herself" and says no other nation
could produce anything like it. He opens a transla-
tion of "A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur"
and calls it "something new in literature," a tour
de force. He confirms my long-cherished suspicion
that Fitzgerald's "Omar" is a much greater poem
than the Persian original. He tells me that to study
the Oriental languages he must obtain the gram-
mars in English. He has written in English an essay
on Persian literature for his diploma. And when he
goes to Naples to study Chinese he proposes to
write in English a thesis on Buddhism. As I sit
in the little room, looking out across the roofs and
domes toward the blue Mediterranean, I wonder
what will be the future of this railroad conductor's
son who talks with critical judgment of Dryden,
Gray, and Shelley, who has read Hamlin Garland

i6 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

and the plays of Rostand. I wonder, too, what
will be the future of this young Italy who is knocking
at our old gates, the Italy of D'Annunzio, of Pascoli
and Croce, the renascent Italy of Ferranti, Rubat-
tino, and Marconi. A young doctor comes in as
we sit by the window. He is going later to Tripoli,
and is taking lessons in Arabic in the meantime.
His father, I am informed, was a lifelong friend of
Pascoli, a fellow-professor at the University of
Bologna. He speaks in a gentle voice of the great
man whose poetry he seems to know almost by
heart. Quite forgetting the Arabic, he repeats
that strange, haunting ballad **0 Cavalla storna^^
and they tell me the story of its origin. They tell
me, too, tales of court intrigue that sound incredible
to Western ears, tales told in a whisper, in confidence,
and which lie, they say, at the back of Pascoli's
somber history.

And so the days go by until the ship is discharged
and we say farewell once more. Heading south,
we drop our empty chianti flasks over the side and
take up the orderly flow and return of watch-keeping
and repose; Gibbon comes into his own again. Nick
Carter is to the fore in the galley after supper. The
Skipper brings down a few of his shiUing novels with
their striking paper covers — strong meat for strong
men, indeed — and inquires if I can give him some-
thing to read. I look over the shelves in some per-
plexity. I know what he wants; or rather, I know

HARBOURS OF MEMORY 17

what he doesn't want. He is a tall, thin man with
an expression of placid authority, the result of ten
years' successful command. He regards seafaring
as "a wasted life" and seeks forgetfulness of his
mournful lot in tales of flaming passion and spectac-
ular contests with fortune. It must not be sup-
posed, however, that he is an uneducated man.
He can express himself with forceful propriety
upon most subjects, and his acquaintance with
modern fiction, like Sam Weller's knowledge of
London, is extensive and peculiar. The pity of it is
that he stops at fiction. To get him to read any-
thing else is like putting a balky horse at a fence.
He is afflicted with the modern Englishman's illu-
sion that non-fiction is uninteresting. He is ironical
at the expense of novelists, too, who, according to
him, hand him the same old stuff in every book he
buys. Here's the hero, here the heroine, he says,
setting a can of tobacco and a bottle of ink on op-
posite sides of my chest of drawers. Here in be-
tween (taking a mass of cigar- and cigarette-boxes,
hair-brushes, and a collar or two) are the complica-
tions of the plot. The problem is to get these two
together with the complications behind them.

"Gosh!" he remarks, lighting a cigar, "I could do
it myself! "

I suggest he try it.

"Easy as falling off a log," he continues. Try
it? Why, he did have a try — long voyage across

1 8 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

the Indian Ocean — nothing to do but take the
sun — fine weather — got an idea. In reply to my
inquiry about the idea, he smokes hard for a moment,
laughs, and finally admits he didn't strike out any-
thing very brilliant in ideas, but of course he didn't
try very hard.

"There was a man — and a girl ... in love,
you know."

**A can of tobacco and an ink-bottle — yes?" I
murmur.

The Skipper laughs. "Gosh! I don't believe
there's anything else to write a story about," he
declares, at length.

I give him "The Nigger of the Narcissus," and he
goes back to his bridge-cabin, to a new experience.

We make good speed now, being in ballast, and
it is only a matter of two or three days before we tie
up alongside the jib-cranes and the iron-ore dumps
of Goletta, which is by Tunis, with Carthage a mile
or so to the northward. Here Gibbon might have a
reasonable chance of holding a student, supposing
we had any students in the ship's company. But
for most of us the present is too fantastically un-
familiar, the blaze of colour is too insistent, for us
to bother much about ruins. In the evening, when
the cranes have ceased to tumble the red ironstone
into the holds, and the Arab night watchman, with
his big yellow dog and heavily knobbed staff, spreads
his little carpet on the quay to make his two-bow

HARBOURS OF MEMORY 19

prayer, we cross the entrance to the Lake of Tunis
and climb aboard the electric trolley-car that runs
into the city. We wander round, looking at the
shops where wealthy French tourists are purchasing
curios and Moorish furniture; we peer doubtfully
through the enormous gates which lead into the
Arab quarter and decide that we are safer in the
wide boulevards; we even discover a bookstore and
pause in the hope of finding a stray English volume
to read. I call the Second's attention to a cheap
line of French classics, for he has sometimes incau-
tiously owned to a knowledge of French.

"Not to read it," he parries, looking alarmed —
**not to read what you call well."

So I purchase for half a franc a paper-bound
edition of the "Barber of Seville" and a copy of
La Vie Parisienne, and we go on to dine at one
of the little open-air cafes near the Military Club,
where there is a band playing Waldteufel and
Mascagni. Here we take a table, and the proprie-
tress, a handsome young Frenchwoman, noting
new arrivals, hastens to put us at our ease with a
burst of unintelligible welcome. And what is it
that we wish.? I hand the menu, in French and
Arabic — the French handwriting being about as
easy to decipher as the Arabic — to the Second, who
gives me a long and menacing look before clearing
his throat and attempting a selection. The pro-
prietress looks keenly at our grinning faces, and then

20 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

at the Second, who is extremely warm and worried.
He puts his finger on a Hne of hieroglyphics and
seems to signify that we will have some of that.
The proprietress utters an exclamation. I look
over and note that he is asking for plats du jour.
Ah! she comprehends. But which? We do not
spick French? Then she will essay.

"See!" She points. **Feesh, rosbif, poulet, pond-
ing, yes? Which is it? An' wine? Fin hlanc
ou rouge?'' Eventually, to the great rehef of the
Second, who is understood to remark, sotto voce
that he doesn't know French, "to speak it very
well," we consummate an intelligible order, and
Lladame makes a descent upon another table.

It is a very good dinner. When one considers
that the total cost per head, including wine, coffee
and cognac, is three and a half francs, it is an astound-
ingly good dinner. The military band plays with
enthusiasm, which leads one to hope that they too,
have either had a similar good dinner or are trumpet-
ing their way toward it. Officers with clanking
swords and pretty women; majestically bearded
old sherifs in wonderful robes of silk with gold needle-
work and turbans with precious stones; Arab women
so closely veiled that the Third pauses open-mouthed
with his fork raised, to stare; lemonade merchants
with cHnking brass cups; fezzed peanut-sellers;
larky Arab newsboys; and an interminable proces-
sion of incredibly maimed and misshapen beggars —

HARBOURS OF MEMORY 21

pass before us as we sit under the awning and eat
our meal. We dally with the coffee and cognac
and light cigarettes, and I notice the Second stealth-
ily loosening a button of his vest. The Third,
pushing his chair back a little, looks at me with an
expression in his cheerful young eyes that I imagine
to mean, "Say, Hfe's not so bad, after all." As I
return his smile his face grows indistinct in the cigar-
ette smoke, the brilHant colouring of the striped
awning fades, and the clash and jingle of the music
die away. Some one is shaking me, and I sit up
with a start.

**Come on," says my old friend and shipmate.
"They will haul the gangway in in a minute. Just
one before you go. Here's luck."

We drink, and I hastily thrust back in its place
the book I had taken down for a little while, a
book which must have been, alas! only a Book of
Dreams.

And the gangway being about to be hauled in, I
stepped aboard.

THE CRUSADERS

The information that we go out at dusk is received
by the ship's company in various ways, according
to the type and degree of responsibihty. Some
deride it as a joke. Have we not been about to go
out these last ten weeks? Some say solemnly,
"Then we'll be sunk"; and add in a whisper, "and she
'11 go down like a stone." They adopt an attitude
of mournful pride in serving aboard a coffin-ship,
whose fate is sealed as soon as she pokes her aged
nose outside the breakwater. Some mutter. "Thank
goodness!" for they are weary of harbour life, and
desire, though they would never admit it, to see the
land sink down behind the horizon. Some are senti-
mentally regretful, for they are in love with dark-
eyed Italian signorine, languorous Syriennes, ami-
able Maltese, or brisk and styHsh Greek koritsai,
with whom they have danced in the gaunt Casino
or bathed on the yellow beach below. Some are
excited, for they are young and this is almost the
first time they have been to sea. And others are
serious, for they have responsibilities. It is a singu-
lar fact that one cannot be forehanded with an

22

THE CRUSADERS 23

anxiety. One may prepare unto the very last and
most ultimate contingency. One may foresee all
disaster, and provide barrier behind barrier of
remedial devices. One may have been through a
precisely identical experience for years on end —
NHmporte! Fear, born of the stern matron Re-
sponsibility, sits on one's shoulders like some heavy
imp of darkness, and one is preoccupied and, pos-
sibly, cantankerous.

While I am making out the engine-room station-
bill, the Chief enters and hands me a chit. It is a
formal order to do something which is already done.
It adds at the bottom that at 6:30 sharp we shall
move out. I finish making out the bill, apportioning
the weaker brethren of the stokehold to different
watches, and assigning Mr. Ferguson, a junior
engineer, to take watch with me. More of Mr.
Ferguson anon.

I go out and take a survey of progress on deck.
In the classic phrase, all is bustle and confusion.
Men in khaki are moving rapidly to and fro, hauling
heavy cases which contain shells, bombs, detonators,
compressed-air bottles, spare parts, and stores of
all kinds. Others, mounted on flimsy ladders, are
busy connecting controls, filling petrol tanks, and
adjusting engines, on the seaplanes which He, like
huge yellow grasshoppers with folded wings, under
the awnings of the fore-deck hangar. Walking
about in an extreme undress of gray flannel trousers

^4 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

and petrol-splashed khaki tunics are some of the
pilots and observers.

Suddenly there is a roar from one of the engines;
the awnings belly and flap violently; a piece of
newspaper rushes past me like a bullet, and I find
myself in an almost irresistible gale of wind. A
mechanic is trying out an engine. One of our cats,
seated on the mine-sweeping machine, jumps off
in disgust at the noise, and is immediately blown out
of sight, tail in air, along the deck. We hold on.
The engine dies down, surges up, dies away again,
flutters, barks once with astonishing vigour, and
stops. A pilot, who has been making frantic gestures
to the mechanic, whose head alone is visible above
the fuselage, now climbs the piano-wire ladder which
leads to the seat, and converses with energy, and,
let us hope, widsom. The flight-commander, an
imposing creature in naval uniform, with the gold-
lace rings of a lieutenant, a pair of gold wings,
and a gold star on his sleeve, hurries up and speaks
rapidly to his pilots.

They all Hght cigarettes. This, I observe, is
the one indispensable factor of war — one must
light a cigarette. At any given moment of the day,
I will guarantee that three fourths of our ship's
company are each striking one of the dubious
matches supplied by our glorious Oriental ally,
and are lighting cigarettes supplied by our glorious
Hellenic ally. I tremble when I think of the noise

THE CRUSADERS 25

which is going on beneath the artillery fire of the
Western and Eastern fronts — the noise of millions
of matches being struck to ignite millions of cigar-
ettes. I observe a youth descending from a ladder,
where he has been putting tiny brass screws into a
defective aileron, to the gangway between the plane-
platform and the bulwarks. He sits down, produces
a cigarette. I see the commander, who was master
of a sailing ship before the flight-commander's
parents were married, lighting a cigarette from
the chief engineer's. I observe a signalman's face
protruding from the telephone-exchange window,
and I also observe a cigarette protruding from his
ear. In the flap pocket of the quartermaster, now
testing the steering gear, is an obvious box of cigar-
ettes. I feel that I have eluded my destiny some-
how. It has become perfectly plain to me that no
man can achieve greatness in war unless he smokes
cigarettes. But I digress. It is time to take a
turn out of the engines.

Passing along the bridge deck, where a small army
of young sailors are hoisting the motor-launches
and looking extremely serious about it, I come upon
a still more serious party clustered about an anti-
aircraft gun. Some hold shells under their arms
very much as a lady holds her Pomeranian, and
tickle the fuse (which corresponds to the nose of
the Pomeranian) with a wrench. Some are pushing
with tremendous energy a sort of mop which is

26 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

always getting jammed half way up the bore. Others
stand in readiness, breathing hard and looking
round self-consciously. They are the anti-aircraft
crew. I pass by, smiling internally. They are
about to be blooded, all except the muscular per-
son with the hoarse voice who lectures them on the
mysteries of their craft. I know him well. I have
a pecuhar detestation of this particular gun, which
will be comprehended when it is pointed out that
the holding-down bolts are precisely three feet six
inches above my pillow. Just as I doze, after a
hard day below and a plentiful lunch, followed
by a perfect cigar, the muscular person with the
hoarse voice begins an oration upon the use in
action of the ten-pounder '' 'Otchkiss quick-firin'
gun, anti-aircraft mountings.'' His voice becomes
a husky growl as he indicates the various portions
of the gun's anatomy to the open-mouthed young-
sters. I He below, devising a fitting eternal punish-
ment for him and his hobnailed minions. An
ammunition box is opened — slap! A shell is lifted
and put in — slap two. Click! The breech closes.
Clock! It opens. Then comes a thump, as some-
one drops one of the spanners. A scuffle of boots.
Hoarse voice descanting upon ''use o' judgment in
estimatin' speed of objective only obtainable in
actual practice on enemy machines." Hence I am
no friend of this gun and her crew.

I pass on and down the ladder to the spar deck.

THE CRUSADERS 27

Here is where I live. Here is the engine room,
the steering gear, the heart of the ship. Abaft of
this again are more planes under high awnings.
Below them is the main deck, what is called the
lower or mess deck, where hammocks are slung
at night and meals are eaten during the day. Far-
ther aft is the sick bay, and below that the stokers'
quarters. Below these are cold stores and ammuni-
tion rooms and cells for the unworthy, of whom, alas,
even this respectable ship carries a few.

As I step into the alleyway where I live, and pass
into the engine room, the steering engine, "which is
situated in its own little steel cottage close at hand,
suddenly performs a furious staccato version of a
Strauss chorus, and then stops abruptly, as if
ashamed of its outburst, breathing steamily through
its nostrils. The control-shaft remains motionless.
Evidently the quartermaster has satisfied himself
that all is well. A perspiring oiler emerges from
the engine-room ladder and fusses with the glands
and lubricators. I look down at the shining covers
of the main-engine cylinders, and suddenly I ex-
perience an emotional change. In some mysterious
fashion the load of responsibility lifts, and I become
light-hearted. I feel gay and care-free. After
all, I reflect brazenly, what's the odds? One has
done one's utmost — let what may happen. Care
killed a cat. There can be no surprises. These
huge, simmering, silent engines are my friends.

28 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

With them and their like I have spent many arduous
years. I have their record. I know their secrets.
I have had them asunder. Their enormous propor-
tions are our heritage from a bygone generation
and I have stood in amazement before the heroic
dimensions of their midmost ventricles. I reflect
upon their countless voyages when I was a child;
upon the men who have slaved in the heat of the
East, who have slept in my bunk, who have come
aboard full to the teeth, who have sung their songs
and drawn their pay, and now lie, let us hope, in
some quiet churchyard at home.

I reflect upon all this, I say, and I am no longer
worried. For a brief spell I savour the pleasure of
the seafaring life. It occurs to me that this explains
in part the enigmatic affability which the great
occasionally display. They have a sudden vision
of life as a whole, and for one brief instant they
become human, and smile. It may be so. How-
ever, I must descend from the heights of speculation
into the engine room. As I reach the middle grat-
ing, I feel the undersides of the cyhnders, and note
that they are sufficiently hot. The thermometer
hanging near the generator registers a hundred
and ten. Four great ventilators send down cool
jets of air, and I decide that the temperature is
very comfortable. A glance at the oil-gauge and
speed-meter and I descend yet farther to the starting
platform.

THE CRUSADERS 29

A young man is walking to and fro in a highly
superior manner, as if personally responsible for
the conduct of the war, and quite equal to the oc-
casion. He is an engine-room artificer, and assists
Mr. Ferguson and myself while on watch. I inquire
if everything is ready for me, and he assures me,
with a whimsical smile, that he believes so. Rather
nettled at this frivolous behaviour I become anxious
again and put one or two pertinent queries. I try
the reversing gear, which moves over with a smart
cHck and a most gratifying hiss, and open the man-
oeuvring-valve. The young man, whom I have
lectured assiduously on this point, stands ready,
and as the enormous cranks move and I shout, he
reverses the gear. The cranks, with a sigh of immense
boredom, move back and pause. Again we reverse
and I administer a shade more steam. The cranks
move again and the business is repeated — in the
opinion of the young man — ad nauseam. At last,
after many essays, the high-pressure crank is per-
mitted to descend to the bottom of the stroke, which
is six feet; it reaches the dead centre, the point de
mort, as our allies call it, passes it, and comes up
like a giant refreshed. We reverse, and it goes down
again, and up, over the top, and continues to revolve
in a solemn manner. Bon/

I make a brief excursion round to the back, where
a number of auxiHary engines are busily engaged
about their own particular businesses. I note that

30 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

the main feed-pumps, the auxiliary feed-pump,
the circulating pumps, the bilge-pump, the sanitary-
pump, the fresh-water pump, are all working well,
glance at one or two gauges, and hasten back to
the manceuvring-valve. We reverse and go ahead
for a few revolutions. We stop. The young man,
who is not so foolish as he looks, presses a button
and speaks into a tube marked ''Chief Engineer."
What he says I cannot hear, but I know perfectly
well that the Chief in his cabin is grinning.

The young man is somewhat of a joke. He
affects a felicitous blend of a doctor's ''bedside man
ner'* and the suave courtesy of a department-store
floorwalker. This, in an engine room, is provocative
of mirth. Mr. Ferguson, who is already overdue,
guffaws with rollicking abandon when Mr. de Courcy
emits one of his refined and ladylike remarks. If
Mr. de Courcy has the smoothness of oil — lubricating
oil — Mr. Ferguson has the harsh detergence of
water — strong water. However, as I make a hasty
pilgrimage into the stokehold and discover four
stokers and a coal-passer enjoying a can of tea, it
occurs to me that if Mr. Ferguson doesn't appear
soon, it will be necessary to take steps.

II

I COME back to the engine room, to find Mr. Fer-
guson descending the engine-room ladder, in a white
singlet, khaki short pants, striped socks with red

THE CRUSADERS 31

suspenders, and tennis shoes. The inevitable cigar-
ette is in his mouth, and his cap, the white cover
of which is stained a chrome yellow with oil-splashes,
is over one eye in a negligent and rakish manner.
He is a tall strong figure of thirty-odd, his face
freckled, his nose twisted, his hair of an Irish flame-
red. His voice is stupendously frank and genial,
and he disarms criticism with the wealth of his con-
fessions. He is one of the world's unfortunates,
he will inform you gaily. (You are bound to meet
him.)

Just now he is making a specialty of courts-
martial. He is continually being court-martialled.
He belongs to an obscure and elusive subdivision
of the Navy known as the M. F. A., which is, being
interpreted, Merchant Fleet Auxiliary, though Mr.
Ferguson asserts with racial satire that the initials
stand for Merely Fooling Around. This indicates
one of his main difficulties, which is to realize that
he is subject to naval discipline. It is to him an
intolerable state of aff'airs, when he becomes pleas-
antly jingled ashore in Arab-town, and flings a
wine bottle at a native, that he should be appre-
hended by a silent and formidable posse of blue-
jackets with hangers at their sides and police bras-
sards on their arms. It is still more intolerable
when, after joyously beating up said posse and being
carried by main force to the cells in the barracks,
he is informed by typed letter that, having been

32 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer, he will be
tried by court-martial on such-and-such a date.
He seems unable to comprehend the sudden change
in the attitude of the naval authorities. Only a few
weeks previously he had been one of the crew of a
trawler which had, more by luck than cunning,
caught an enemy submarine recharging her depleted
batteries, and methodically pounded her to pieces
until she filled and sank. Mr. Ferguson's- part in
the drama was to stand on the bottom rung of his
little engine-room ladder, with his head just above
the scuttle, and remark after each salvo, with keen
enjoyment, **Good again! Hit her up, boys!" for
which he duly received in cold cash five hundred
dollars of prize-money. Mr. Ferguson's interviews
with sums over a hundred dollars have been fleet-
ing, shadowy episodes of coruscating and evanes-
cent brilHancy. It was even so on this occasion.
The native world that hives and swarms adown the
narrow and filth-cluttered alleys of Arab-town profited
vastly at Mr. Ferguson's expense. He was regal in
his largess. His method of flinging money abroad
and kicking the recipients appealed to their Oriental
instincts. In two days he had cleaned up the town,
from can-can dances to hashish parties in the dis-
used mosque behind the wall of the Jewish cemetery;
and he was sampling for the third time the ex-
quisite transmigrations which befall the soul when
steeped in Turkish gin, as the posse already men-

THE CRUSADERS 33

tioned broke into Ali Ben Farag's Constantinople
Divan for Officers Only, and bore him back
to barracks under the quiet eyes of the Syrian
stars.

The fact is, Mr. Ferguson is temperamentally
averse to discipline. He is one of those to whom
the war is of no moment whatever. His patriotism
is more a postulated abstraction than a glowing
inspiration. He is one of those rootless organisms
which float hither and yon over the world, indigenous
nowhere, at home everywhere. They fall into no
categories of wisdom or virtue, for they have the
active yet passionless inconclusiveness of intelligent
lower animals. They bear no mahce and suffer no
regret. They leave a memory without making a
name. They resolve their personal belongings to
the irreducible minimum of a battered and padlocked
sea-bag. Their cabins contain neither curios nor con-
veniences, neither photographs nor tokens of femin-
ine aflFection. They have a far look in their pale
eyes, and one wonders what distant and delightful
haven they are already visualizing. For them there
is no continuing city. They must on — on! pressing
forward in blind ardour toward a retreating paradise
whence, even were they to arrive, they would im-
mediately prepare to depart. They are the true
romantics of our age. Grimy, dissolute, and in-
competent, they pass gaily through our orderly
and disciplined crowds of unimaginative realists

34 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

who do the work of the world, and brush off upon
us stray threads of golden fancy, fallen from the
clouds of tarnished glory which they trail behind
them.

Having reached the starting platform, Mr. Fer-
guson halts and collects his apparently scattered
faculties. Although under what is known in the
Navy as "open arrest," he has contrived to get ashore
by means of one of those preposterous yet plausible
excuses which only the romantic can devise. He
is now in the no-man's land between intoxication
and sobriety, and stands with his tennis shoes
wide apart, the muscles of his legs distending the
scarlet straps of his garters, and his stony stare fixed
upon Mr. de Courcy, who patrols the platform in
front of the engines.

No man can gaze for long upon Mr. de Courcy 's
refined and genteel physiognomy without perceiving
the fundamental absurdity of the universe. Mr. de
Courcy is a gentleman of good family who, by some
mysterious dispensation, evaded the normal destiny
of his type; for, instead of entering him for holy
orders, his family, who I understand are "county,"
shipped him to a Central American oil field, where
for some years he occupied an obscure position
on the engine-room staff. My own impression is
that he would be better in the Church, in business,
in the House of Lords, in the Army — anywhere
save in a ship's engine room. He has the ineradica-

THE CRUSADERS 35

ble predisposition of his class to treat the actual
performance of a job of work as derogatory to his
dignity. He assures me that in the Navy, by which
he means regular men-of-war, he was not required
to do the unpleasant things that I regard as his
daily portion. His delicately chiselled features flush
faintly behind the veil of cigarette smoke as he re-
grets the violence of my language and the wild
impropriety of my metaphors. Nothing, however,
can ruflfle the eternal and hereditary conviction
in which he reposes, that he and his Hke are of finer
clay, that race and gentihty are adequate substitutes
for achievement.

Whether Mr. Ferguson focuses the precise and
piquant differences between himself and Mr. de
Courcy it would be difficult to discover; but as he
gazes, the stony stare softens, the drawn lines of his
reddish freckled face crinkle into laughter, and the
bony ridge of his twisted nose ghstens humorously.
He is finding himself. None of the stimulants
of Western civilization has much power over Mn
Ferguson. They only dim his brightness for a brief
period, and not even the most corrosive of cocktails
can permanently affect the hard lustre of his incon-
sequent optimism. With a short laugh, Hke a dog's
bark, he swings past me and dives round behind
the engines, and, liftmg a movable plate in the plat-
form, investigates hurriedly among divers cocks
and valves, as if he had suddenly remembered a

36 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

buried treasure, and was reassuring himself as to its
exact whereabouts.

HI

In the meantime we are standing by. From above
comes the blast of the first lieutenant's whistle, as
he presides over the doings of his minions. It is,
for all the lateness of the season, intensely hot. The
armies in Palestine report a heat-wave of unparalleled
length and temperature. And even here, with a
breeze blowing in from the Mediterranean, the
thermometer remains at 90 degrees all day, and
our rooms are like ovens until the small hours.

Mr. de Courcy goes into the stoke-hold, to get a
breath of fresh air. The oiler slowly descends from
above and moves in and out among the engines on
the middle grating, filling lubricators, adjusting
siphon-wicks and pausing for a well-earned spell
under the after ventilator. As I make a gesture in-
dicating the astern guide-bars he replies with a
slight raising of his left hand (with a cigarette in
the fingers), which may be interpreted somewhat on
these lines: "Have no fear. I have attended to the
lubrication of the astern guides, and am not likely,
at my time of life, to neglect so trifling a precaution.
Rest easy. I was doing this when you were a boy."

What mystifies me about all these men of mine
is the new lease of life they have taken since the
orders for steam came. They take a fresh interest

THE CRUSADERS 37

in everything. They had become slack, lacka-
daisical, and preoccupied with ridiculous grievances.
They went ashore and brought back tales of all
disasters told them by the motley-clad survivors
of torpedoed ships. They muttered openly in my
hearing that they desired to be shifted to a ship
that went to sea. And now, so far are they from
appreciating the heroic, that their attitude by no
means resembles the gladiators of old, with their
lugubrious "Hail, Caesar! we who are about to die
salute thee." Nothing is farther from their thoughts
than dying, though two submarines broke into our
sweepers four miles outside last night and sank three
of them. Their attitude is much better rendered
as "Hail, Caesar! we who are about to get busy
salute thee." They come down on the stroke of
eight bells, watch after watch, and pursue the even
tenor of their ways, cigarette in mouth and oil can
or shovel in hand, and seem never to visualize the
oncoming destruction that may be ripping through
the dark water outside. Pooh! Such anticipations
are foreign to their nature, which seems to have been
toughened into an admirable closeness of texture
by the frightful cHmate of their native islands and
the indurating labour of the sea.

So we pause, waiting at our allotted stations for
the orders, which come at last with a clash and jingle
of gongs; the telegraph-pointer swings to and fro
and comes to rest at "Stand by." Mr. de Courcy

38 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

immediately replies with an elegant manipulation
of the handle, and records the time or a little black-
board at his elbow. The Chief, a tall, lank young
man in a soiled white uniform, ripples half way
down the upper ladder and catches my eye, raising
his eyebrows the while. I nod, and he makes a slow
circular gesture. I nod again. I ask Mr. Ferguson
if he is ready. He straightens up where he stands
by the main feed-pumps, waves his hand with a mag-
nificent air, and says **Let her go, Gallagher!"

Assisted by Mr. de Courcy, I let her go. The
immense limbs of the triple-expansion engines
flourish back and forth, and come to rest as I close
the manceuvring-valve. Mr. Ferguson prances to
and fro in front of the pumps, starting-lever in
hand, his head twisted round to observe the be-
haviour of the automatic control. He lays the
lever over his shoulder like a weapon, and in the
dim twilight he reminds me, with his bare white
calves crossed by the scarlet garter-straps, of some
Roman legionary on guard. Faithful unto

But Mr. Ferguson would deprecate the suggestion.
He had never been faithful unto anything. Loyalty
is not his metier. His digressions from the path of
righteousness usually provide him with a free pass
to the great outdoors, the wide free world in which
he is a joyous and insolvent pilgrim. He is puzzled
at this novel attitude of the Navy, which, instead
of firing him without a reference, oppresses him with

THE CRUSADERS 39

typed forms and a periodical court-martial, which
sentences him to be "dismissed his ship." He will
never realize that to those who are brought up
within the charmed circle of the officer-class, such
a sentence is tantamount to a death warrant. Heh!
Give him his pay and he'll quit. Yes, sir! He
didn't know he was marrying the darned business.
What's eating them anyway.? There's a war on?
Nobody'd think it, to hear those popinjays talk
about conduct unbecoming an officer. Huh! It's
a dog's life, sure.

Now the fact is that when, hereafter, you meet
Mr. Ferguson, shaking the dust of the Nevada
copper mines from his feet in disgust, or hustling
about the levees at New Orleans in search of a job
as an oiler, or lounging on the water-front at Port
Limon, waiting for a chance to stow away on a
fruiter, he will speak of his life in the British Navy,
with a break in his voice and his pale eyes full of
happy tears. Ah, those were the days! he will tell
you. A man was treated as a man there. And so on.

This is the mark of the true romantic, it must
be a fascinating existence. One feels a perfect
Pecksniff in the presence of beings whose imagina-
tions are for ever ahead of their experience. They
are but strangers here: heaven is their home. One
has the impression, while driving them to their
appointed tasks amid the humid heat and noisy
chaffering of an engine room, of employing shackled

40 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

angels whose wings have been cHpped close and who
have had their tail-feathers pulled out. And they
certainly regard one as a demon with an inexplicable
passion for toil, a creature without vision and with-
out hope beyond the immediate accomplishment of
senseless labour, a slave-driver owing allegiance to
a secret and sinister authority which they generally
call CapitaHsm.

Mr. Ferguson is eloquent on the subject of capital-
ists. This, he assures me, is a capitalists' war.
Look, he cries, at the poor simps being butchered in
France, all to fill the capitalists' bags with gold!
Even their own children have to go. Nothing is
sacred to a capitalist save his **bags of gold." It is
the mark of the true romantic to be preoccupied
with symbols, and Mr. Ferguson is partial to the
gorgeous imagery of modern anarchism.

However, it must not be assumed that Mr.
Ferguson and I are deadly enemies because of the
incompatibility of our ideals. He is graciously
pleased to overlook what he calls my funny ideas,
and rewards me with thumbnail sketches of episodes
in his career. It was so on this occasion as we sailed
out to join the squadron off Askalon. Mr. de
Courcy having gone up to get his supper, and the
telegraph having rung "full ahead," Mr. Ferguson
fell into a vein of reminiscence, and told me tales
of *'the happy days that are no more." With one
eye on the revolution telegraph and the other on

THE CRUSADERS 41

the steam- and air-gauges, I listen to his Odyssey.
For there is a streak of poetry in him, as I have en-
deavoured to adumbrate. All unconsciously, and
with a far look in his pale blue eyes, he beholds a
picture. From the hell of the Present he sees a
happy Past and a heavenly Future. He can com-
municate atmosphere, and when he remarks that
once, in Liverpool, it came over him that he ought
to settle down and be respectable, I am alert at
once. I could see it **coming over him" — the footsore,
jaded wanderer treading the bright dirty streets;
the smart pretty landlady's daughter leading him
by swift short stages to see how desirable was a small
house at Sefton Park or Garston; the patient search
for employment, ending in a job on the shore-gang
of the White Star Line. For a fortnight all went
well. He was thinking of getting engaged.

To my disappointment, he slides all too easily from
this momentous and interesting subject to a whim-
sical description of his adventures on the mammoth
liners on which he was employed. He tells how,
while working in the low-pressure valve-chest of the
Gigantic's port engine, he slipped and fell through
the exhaust-pipe into the main condenser. He
pictures the consternation of his helper, who had
gone for a tool, when he found his mate vanished;
the efforts to locate his muffled shouts; the tappings
of hammers, the footsteps, the hoarse murmurs
broken by an occasional "Hi! where are yer, mate ?"

42 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

and his replies, stifled by his own laughter. It is
perfectly plain that this sort of thing was more to
Mr. Ferguson's taste than humdrum industry.
When he was finally fished out at the end of a coil of
rope, the leading hand threatened him with dis-
missal if it occurred again; for the leading hand was
not romantic, only a soul besotted with efficiency.

And on the Oceanic again these two fell foul of
each other, for Mr. Ferguson lost his way on the
boiler-tops. He asserts that there were hundreds of
boilers on that ship, all alike, and thousands of
ladders. He grew fascinated with the problem
as he groped up and down, through cross-bunkers,
in and out of fan-rooms, for ever encountering fresh
boilers, but never the one where he had been working.
But the third time that leading hand found him far
from his job he became explosive and personal,
led Mr. Ferguson firmly by the arm through inter-
minable corridors, until his boiler stood dimly revealed
through a manhole, and informed him that it was
his last chance. Mr. Ferguson grew resentful.
As if he could help it! Silly, he calls it, to get in a
rage over a little thing like that. However, that's
the sort of man he was. Only got himself dis-
liked. And just out of petty spite, he orders him,
Mr. Ferguson to wit, to work all night overtime on
a rush job.

Mr. Ferguson has strong views on night work, as
I can testify. He imagines the capitalists ought to

THE CRUSADERS 43

be satisfied when they have spoiled a man's day,
without gouging into the hours of rest. Hurrying
to his lodgings, he had his tea, and the landlady's
daughter made him up a packet of sandwiches and a
can of cocoa, to be warmed on a steampipe when he
needed it. You can see them there, slogging away
through the night, stripping an auxihary engine and
erecting the new one, pausing about midnight for a
snack and a smoke. And while the engineer on
watch is having forty winks, one of the gang becomes
confidential with Mr. Ferguson and reveals a dis-
covery. One of the storerooms where electrical
gear is kept has been left open. And he knows a
scrap-metal merchant who and so on.

Mr. Ferguson becomes vague just here. Well,
I know how it is, he suggests. One thing leads to
another. You can easily pack a lot of sheet rubber
round you and nobody be any the wiser. Nobody
was, apparently, until a day or so later. Mr.
Ferguson arrived home for a late supper, having
been standing treat to the boys after a boxing tourna-
ment, when Maggie — that was his girl, you see —
met him at the door with wide serious eyes. Two
men had called to see him, she said, and she knew
one of them was a detective — she'd seen him before
when she'd been to the station about having had her
pocket picked. What had he done.?

Well, by now, Mr. Ferguson knew well enough
what he had done, and it is not in the nature of

44 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

true romantics to deny anything. With Maggie's
eyes searching his face and Maggie's hands clutching
his coat, he backed against the Httle near-mahogany
hall stand and admitted that it might be awkward
if they came back again, as they would when they
couldn't find him elsewhere. They stood there,
those two — the girl in an agony of sorrow and fear,
with a maternal desire to shield the big silly, he
devising some way of quitting. And as they stood
there, they heard footsteps at the end of the silent
street. Mr. Ferguson must have stiffened. He
says, in his Celtic way, that he felt his hair move.
Maggie stuck his cap on and dragged him through
the kitchen into the scullery. She opened the door
softly, pushed him out, and followed him into the
tiny yard. Quick, over the wall at the bottom, into
the next garden! The house is empty; go through
and out of the front door into the side street. Run !

Yes, write and she'd tell him run! And she

darted into the house to face the future alone.

Mr. Ferguson followed her instructions. I am
convinced that he enjoyed himself immensely that
evening. He dropped over the wall and put his foot
through a cucumber-frame, it is true, but the
light crash and jingle only set off two cats at frantic
speed. He also fell over something in the hall of
the empty house and skinned his knuckles. He
says he has often wondered what it was. Once
in the quiet suburban street, with two lovers saying

THE CRUSADERS 45

good-night under a lamp-post far down on the other
side, he walked unobtrusively away. It was char-
acteristic of him that he didn't write, and therefore
never heard any more of the affair. He rode on a
trolley car away out into the suburbs of Liverpool,
and then took a train a little way farther. It was
autumn, and he began to walk through England.

We are interrupted by a youthful sailor, who comes
down with a chit from the bridge, a chit which
informs me that, having joined the other vessels
of the squadron, we are ordered to proceed at ten
knots, and the commander will appreciate it if we
can maintain the revolutions at fifty, so as to keep
station. Mr. Ferguson laughs satirically, and says
the old feller ought to boil his head. This after
the youthful sailor has gone up again. I agree that
a ship forty years old is a problem when it comes
to "keeping station." "There you areT' says Mr.
Ferguson, and conceives his animus against all
constituted authority to be only too well founded.
"And here comes Pinhead Percy," he mutters, as
Mr. de Courcy descends, a gold-tipped cigarette
in his lips, and with an engaging smile. Leaving
him to carry on, we go up to dinner.

IV

It is a quarter to four next morning when the ward-
room steward on night duty brings me a cup of tea
and a bloater-paste sandwich.

46 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

"Anything doing?" I inquire, rolling over to reach
the cup.

He murmurs that he thinks we're going half speed
and the airmen are all dressing.

"See anything yet ?"

"Oh, yes, you can see artillery at it ashore," he
observes casually.

I sit up. It has not been my lot to behold artillery
at it ashore, so I swallow the tea, dress hurriedly, and
go out on deck. It is still dark, but away to star-
board hangs a peculiar faint glow. At intervals
this glow brightens and quivers, and the brightening
and quivering is followed by a sound like the distant
closing of a heavy door. Ahead and astern of us are
ships keeping station, black blots in the indeterminate
mingling of sky and sea. At intervals one can make
out smaller blots moving restlessly hither and yon,
passing and repassing, turning and gliding with silent
and enigmatic persistence toward unknown goals.

I yawn, conclude that these small craft are saving
us the fatigue of zigzagging, and go below. Mr.
Ferguson is descending the ladder just in front of
me. Mr. de Courcy, a slender wraith in white over-
alls, appears at the other door of the engine room, and
follows. Eight faint strokes sound on the bell-bar
below, very faint, out of consideration for enemy
underwater craft who may be, and in fact are,
listening in tense vigilance not far away. It is four
o'clock.

THE CRUSADERS 47

The engineer going ofF watch hands me a chit from
the Chief to the effect that the planes will be launched
at daybreak, when I am to call him. Good enough!
We carry on, and presently the revolution-gongs
begin to clatter, now more, now less, and through the
skylight one can see the sky beginning to lighten.

Mr. Ferguson lounges to and fro, as I stand by the
manoeuvring-valve, and whistles "I wanter go back, I
wanter go back, to the place where I was born." It
occurs to me that this is an engaging fiction. I doubt
very much if he would care to bo back there — some-
where on the western edge of Ulster. He once said
his adventures might go into a book. What he
ought to have said was that his adventures might
have come out of a book; for, though he is com-
municative, he says very little about himself. It is
the adventure which interests him, not the biography
of the adventurer. He has the happy love of
incognito which is the mark of your true romantic.
It happened to him, certainly. Well, it was this
way And off he goes.

Off he went as I inquired where he walked when he
started away through England. Well, his boots wore
out first, being his thin patents, and he bought a pair
of heavy country shoes, with soles all hobnails and
great horseshoe-shaped Hangings on the heels. Once
he had suppled them, they were fine walking-gear.
And he went on into Yorkshire and down through
Lincolnshire, doing a job of work here and a chore or

48 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

two there for the country-folk, and marvelhng how
empty England seemed. Almost as empty as the sea,
he remarks. But of course he was taking a line that
took him past the big cities. He slept in sheds and
under hay-ricks.

Once he strolled into the huge garage of a hunting-
hotel in Leicestershire, and got into a palatial
limousine in a far corner, and slept like a duke.
Note the metaphor. Your true romantic preserves
the faith in fairyland, for all his gross ineptitudes and
tawdry sociological taradiddles. Mr. Ferguson slept
like a duke. Don't imagine, however, that he is ig-
norant of dukes. He knows more of them than
either you or I, who have never seen one, and who
are unfamiliar with the habits of the species.

Mr. Ferguson has told me the pathetic story of his
efforts to make a fresh start in life when he had
exhausted the resources and the patience of his
native hamlet. As usual, he was vague at points,
but I imagine it was the old poaching business that
induced the irate Bench to lock him up. And when
he emerged, a pale, lathy emblem of repentance, it
was decreed by an outraged parent that he should
emigrate to England, said parent having a brother
who was a locomotive-driver on a branch line. The
idea was to interest Master Ferguson in locomotives,
and in the sylvan loveliness of East Anglia set his
feet in the paths of virtue.

So it fell out, and Mr. Ferguson found himself

THE CRUSADERS 49

cleaning freight engines in a barn at the end of a
branch Hne. It was a branch on a branch — almost
a twig hne in fact, he imphes, whimsically. It
seems that his uncle was a driver distinguished far
above other drivers, inasmuch as he hauled the train
which was appointed to stop on occasion at the duke's
private station on the twig line. And the duke in
question often availed himself of the well-known
eccentricity of the ducal classes by riding on the foot-
plate instead of in his reserved compartment. This
sounds far-fetched, no doubt, to democrats, but it is
quite credible. Dukes have more sense than many
people give them credit for. Possibly, too, this
particular duke was a true romantic himself, and was
only realizing in his maturity what every boy desires
— to ride on the foot-plate. And hence it turned
out that Mr. Ferguson found himself in possession
of a relative who knew a duke.

The pity of it was that Mr. Ferguson could not be
induced to display any particular aptitude or mark
of genius which would justify any one in bringing
him to the notice of the family liege lord.

One gets a glimpse of feudal England while
listening to Mr. Ferguson's account of that happy
valley, with its twig line of railway, rabbits and hares
and pheasants visible on the single track during the
long hours between the twig trains, the vast ducal
seat showing its high turrets and gold-leaf window-
frames among the ancestral trees, the Httle village^

50 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

snuggled along the ducal fence, owned lock, stock,
and barrel by the romantic foot-plate rider, and
wrapped in immemorial quiet. All except Mr.
Ferguson. He was lively when he was young, he
admits, and apt to be a bit wild. A game-keeper
spoke with unwonted feeling to the uncle one eve-
ning at the Cow Roast Inn on the subject of slaying
game birds with stones. Mr. Ferguson, attacked
by ennui, had sauntered down the track one day and
done this frightful deed, visible to an indignant game-
keeper concealed in a neighbouring copse. A lad
with an eye good enough to hit a bird with a stone at
thirty yards or so ought to be playing county cricket
or serving in the Army, he observed, wiping his mouth.
^ His lordship wasn't as stern as he might be on the
subject of preserving. Indeed, I have a notion, born
of Mr. Ferguson's fugitive hints, that this particular
lordship had certain rudimentary views on the
importance of preserving other things besides game —
humanity, for instance, and kindliness and Christian
charity and a sense of humour. Anyhow, when the
incident came to his ears, he expressed a desire
to do something for the youth beyond sending him
to jail. Riding up the twig line on the foot-plate to
join the express for London, he ordered his henchman
to bring the guilty nephew before him for interroga-
tion. So it was done, and one day Mr. Ferguson, a
gawky hobbledehoy with wild red hair standing every
which-way on his turbulent head, was ushered into

THE CRUSADERS 51

one of the vast chambers of the ducal mansion —
ushered in and left alone. His acute misery was
rendered almost unendurable by the fact that an
expanse of shimmering parquetry separated him
from the nearest chair. For a moment he had a wild
notion of crossing this precarious floor on his hands
and knees. For yet another moment he thought of
flight. Even the marble steps up which he had
ascended from the side entrance was preferable to this
dark shining mirror in which he could see the room
upside down and his own scared face.

And then a door opened on the other side of the
room, and a majestic butler appeared, followed by
His Grace himself in a smoking-jacket of peacock-
blue silk with old-gold frogs and piping. The butler
beckoned sternly The duke, going to a desk in the
corner and sitting down, beckoned amiably. The
perspiration broke from Mr. Ferguson's scalp,
and the tickling of his hair nearly drove him dis-
tracted. He essayed a step, quailed, and drew back
to the friendly bear-skin. The majestic butler made
an imperious gesture that brooked no delay. The
duke looked round in innocent surprise. Mr.
Ferguson, clutching at his cap, flaming in hair and
visage, and nursing in his heart a new-born hatred
of the governing classes and their insane luxury,
started hastily across the glassy surface, slipped,
recovered by a miracle that left a deep scratch and a
heel-dent on the floor, wavered, stumbled, deployed

52 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

sideways, and finally, in one last desperate grasp at
equilibrium, threw himself backward, whereupon
his heels both shot forward from under him, he fell
with a terrible thud full length, and lay still, waiting
with closed eyes for death.

But of course the days when he would have been
taken out and beheaded were long gone by. Life is
more complicated now. The majestic seneschal,
instead of clapping his hands and summoning men-
at-arms to remove the clumsy varlet, rushed forward
and assisted the unfortunate to his feet, looking
horror-stricken at the scratches, and supporting him
to the small but priceless Armenian carpet where sat
the duke, at his desk, laughing heartily.

A good sort of duke I surmise; but Mr. Ferguson
will not admit it. He hates the whole race of
^'popinjays,'' as he calls them. Even the beneficence
which followed — a complete colonial kit and fifty
pounds to start life in the great Northwest — does
not soften his asperity. He thinks as little of the
great Northwest as of the House of Lords or the
Royal Navy. It was the beginning of his odyssey,
at all events. How he sold his colonial kit in
Manitoba and got a job as a bartender, and later a
job as a trolley driver, and later a job as something
else, cannot be set out at length. Mr. Ferguson may
some day amplify his tantalizing allusions. I hope
to learn more of his matrimonial adventures in the
Argentine.

THE CRUSADERS 53

In the meantime I must return to the tale he told
me as we worked the engines to and fro, and the ship
worked in close to the shore of the Holy Land, off
Askalon, and the monitors and cruisers took up their
positions around us, and the planes were swung out
and soared away over the enemy's lines round
Gaza. It was a long hot day for all of us; longer and
hotter for the Turks, I fancy, for our guns broke their
great stone bridges and blew up their dumps, and
destroyed their batteries, and they fell back and
back and back until they had lost horse, foot, and
guns, and tortured Syria was free from them for ever.

Mr. Ferguson and I have to take a good deal of this
for granted. We hear the thunder of the capstans
and the shouting, but in our breasts flames no martial
ardour. We are preoccupied with certain defects in
our ancient engines, and fill up the intervals with an
idle tale.

Sleeping like a duke in a palatial Hmousine and like a
tramp under a hedge, after the fashion of the true
romantics, Mr. Ferguson fared southward. It was a
pleasant life withal, he observes, and he marvels that,
as it is so easy, so few, comparatively speaking, adopt
it. Perhaps for the same reason that he abandoned
it, which was that he came to a town, and was lured
once more into industry, unable to escape the wage-
system, as he calls it, and then was blown by the

54 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

winds of fortune out to sea once more. It must
not be supposed that he is opposed in toto to the
economic principle of wages. Indeed, one of his
most attractive theories is that every man ought to
have enough to live on without doing very much for
it. "Twelve to one and an hour for lunch," as he
phrases it in his picturesque way. Nor did he, as I
have noted, object to an occasional diversion as a
wage-slave, providing always that he could, at a
moment's notice, move on. It was when the in-
dustrial octopus reached out its steel tentacles and
began feeling for his free wild spirit, to hold it for-
ever, that he began to squirm and wriggle. Would
have squirmed and wriggled in vain, probably, but
for a fantastic denouement, as you shall see.

As he talks, we become aware of events taking
place outside. Mr. de Courcy, who has been up to
call the Chief, reports our planes over the hues and
Turkish machines making for us as we lie on the
motionless blue water under the blazing forenoon
sun. And presently, as we stand by, engines moving
dead slow, destroyers and motor boats rushing in
swift interweaving circles about us, a terrific con-
cussion makes our old ship quiver to her iron keel,
and the lights dance, and the boiler-casing trembles
visibly, shaking a cloud of soot from the skirting and
making us sneeze. A moment, and another tremen-
dous explosion follows. Our planes are sending back
the range, and the next ship, a monitor with fourteen-

THE CRUSADERS 55

inch guns, is sending her shells eight miles inland
upon the bridges over which the enemy must retreat.
At intervals six-inch guns from British cruisers and
ten-inch guns on French ships join in the game, and a
continuous fog of soot is maintained in my clean
engine room.

Mr. Ferguson is not concerned very much with this.
Your true romantic has but small interest in the
domestic virtues, and he considers that I worry un-
necessarily about dirt in the engine room. With a
passing sneer at capitalists, he deprecates worrying
about anything; quotes a song which is very popular
just now, and which cHnches his argument neatly
enough, and permits him to resume.

For as he wandered here and there through
England, it so chanced that he came upon a quiet
valley through which ran a little river and a little
railway very much like the twig line, reminding him
of it and leading him to digress into that episode of
the duke and the dead-beat, which I have already
narrated. And standing at the head of this valley,
some little way from the hamlet, was a factory of
sorts, with a red-brick smokestack sending out a
lazy dark-blue trail of smoke to mingle with the pale-
blue mist of an autumn evening.

Mr. Ferguson marvelled afresh at this anomalous
affair, for the country was rural and for miles he had
plodded among the fair fields of the "nook-shotten
Isle of Albion." He was unfamiliar with southern

56 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

and midland England, where you may come suddenly
upon a boiler shop or a dynamo factory far from the
coal and iron fields, where flowers grow along the
foundry wall and the manager sits by a window
screened with geraniums.

It was some such place as this Mr. Ferguson had
found when he realized that he had no money and
it was necessary, at any rate, to truckle to capitalists
long enough to earn the price of a meal. Standing
on the bridge over the little river, he decided to *'see
how the land lay up there.'' Quite apart from his
bodily needs, he had the true romantic curiosity to
know what they manufactured in this idyllic corner
of an empty land. Indeed, that was his first ques-
tion to the anxious-eyed foreman whom he found
in deep converse with a manager on the gravel path
outside an oflfice covered with honeysuckle. They
turned upon him and sized him up; asked him what
he wanted to know for. What could he do.? Did he
want a job.? Had he ever worked a lathe.? Could
he work a big one ?

Almost before he realized it, these supposedly
sleepy denizens of a forgotten fairyland had pushed
him along the flower beds, through big sliding doors,
past a trumpeting steam hammer and a tempestuous
rotary blower, into a machine shop whose farther
end was chiefly occupied by a face lathe to which
was bolted an immense fly-wheel. And all those
other machines, Mr. Ferguson assures me, were

THE CRUSADERS 57

manned by boys from school, who leaned over their
slide-rests and regarded the dusty way-worn new-
comer with pop-eyed interest. The manager and the
foreman deployed on either side of their captive, and
besought him to turn to and finish the fly-wheel,
which was a rush job for a factory fifty miles away,
and their only experienced machinist was ill in bed
with pneumonia.

Mr. Ferguson was intrigued. It was a dream, he
imagined. Never in all his varied experience of a
world darkened by capitalists had he ever heard the
like of this: a capitalists' minion imploring a toiler
to toil, offering him a bonus if finished in three days,
and time-and-a-half overtime for night work. He
started to remove his coat, for the fever of action
was infectious, and the foreman almost tore it from
his back. Remarking that it was **a week's work, in a
general way," he found himself examining the rim,
which was still rough, and sorting out the tools.
Evidently regarding him as an angel sent from heaven
to assist them in their extremity, foreman and
manager backed away and watched him with shining
eyes. And Mr. Ferguson, for once blinded to the
madness of his action in trusting himself to the tender
mercies of a hated industrialism, turned to.

And he worked. As Mr. de Courcy comes down
and reports that enemy planes are overhead, and the
telegraph gong rings sharply *Tull ahead,'' and
our twelve-pounder anti-aircraft guns explode with

58 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

full-throated bangs that astonish us with their un-
accustomed anger, Mr. Ferguson assures me that he
worked like a galley slave. He ignores Mr. de
Courcy's delicate insinuation that the enemy is try-
ing to sink us with bombs, and inquires passionately
if I have ever turned a fourteen-foot fly-wheel in an
old lathe. I never have, and he commands me never
to try, especially if the lathe is too small and I am
inexperienced at turning compound castings.

Our three guns, keeping up a deafening fusillade
of twelve-pounder shells into the blue sky, overpower
even the fourteen-inch monsters on the next ship.
We go **Full ahead'' for a few minutes, the steering-
engine clattering like a mad thing as the helm is put
to and fro. Mr. Ferguson resigns the telegraph
to Mr. de Courcy and comes over to where I stand at
the manoeuvring-valve. There is a smile on his
reddish, freckled features, and the ridge of his twisted
nose gHstens in the swift, glancing reflections of the
shining rods.

^'Pneumonia!" he whispers, with a far look in his
eyes. That old machine was enough to give a man
heart disease and brain fever, let alone pneumonia.
More than once, just as he was finishing a cut, the
wheel suddenly appeared out of true, and he had to
invoke the aid of the boys from school and hydraulic
jacks from the store and a partially demented fore-
man from his ofiice, who was in terror lest he, Mr.
Ferguson, should throw up the billet. Mr. Fergu-

THE CRUSADERS 59

son was assured that, if he liked, he could have
permanent employment there, if he only made out
successfully.

Mr. Ferguson snorts at this. Imagine the fatuous
idiocy of offering him a permanency, the one thing
from which he eternally flies! And so he goes on
hour after hour, struggling with the old machine, with
the bubbly casting, with his own inexperience, with
the greasy belts and poorly tempered tools. For
this was in the old days, when much good work was
done on worn-out machinery, when precision instru-
ments were looked at askance, and a man had
to have a certain dexterity of touch and experience of
eye to evolve accuracy out of the rough material of a
country shop. Mr. Ferguson has a great contempt
for those old days in the abstract, though he for-
gives them because of their romantic distance from
him.

But at length it came to pass, on the third evening,
that he seemed about to achieve success, all that
remained to be done to the outer rim being a finishing
cut to give a fine smooth surface that would assume
in time the silvery polish proper to well-bred fly-
wheels. That was at tea-time, and when he returned
from the cottage where an old woman was providing
him with his meals and a bed for his scanty hours of
sleep, he found the works deserted, save for the elderly
engine-man who was to keep the shafting going dur-
ing the night. It was understood that Mr. Ferguson

6o HARBOURS OF MEMORY

was to keep at it for this last night until he had com-
pletely finished, so that the wheel might be slotted
and shipped off first thing in the morning. A big
naphtha flare hissing over his head, Mr. Ferguson
leaned negligently on the aarrow bench that ran
along the wall behind him, and watched the tool
gnawing softly at the slowly revolving wheel. What
a life ! he was thinking. The life of a cog in a wheel, a
deadly dull round of grinding toil, for a mere '*beg-
garly pittance" — ^which is another of Mr. Ferguson's
favourite phrases. Ninepence an hour, forsooth!
And heaven only knows what this little sawed-off
firm would make out of the transaction — hundreds
of pounds, very likely. It was true that they had
magnanimously advanced him three pounds on ac-
count, two of which reposed in his jeans at the mo-
ment; but that was only the devilish cunning of the
capitalist class, to hold him in their clutches a little
longer.

However, it would soon be over. In the morning,
after a good sleep at old Mrs. Thingummy's, he
would step out once more and seek fresh woods and
pastures new.

What was that? lie opened his eyes and noted
that his much-vaunted finishing cut had revealed yet
another blow-hole in the rim of the wheel — a big one
too, darn it ! Well, that was the capitalists' look out.
With folded arms he watched the blunt-nosed tool
gnawing softly away at the gray powdery surface

THE CRUSADERS 6i

and then relapsed into gloomy introspection. He
was bored. He was also tired. And when a man is
both bored and tired, he tends to reHnquish his hold
upon the realities. The shop was full of mysterious
shadows and pale glimmers as the belts flapped in
listless agitation on the idler-pulleys. At the far
end a wheel squeaked, and he could hear the leisurely
rumble and cough of the steam-engine in its corru-
gated house outside. Life? It was a living grave,
cooped up here in a sort of iron mortuary, an im-
prisoned spirit toiling in the service of a sinister
genie. Bump again! That blow-hole must be quite
a big affair. It would need another cut to clean it
out of the wheel. More work. More ninepences.
More truckling to the mercenary spirit of the age.

But the soft murmur of the lathe was very sooth-
ing, and in spite of his bitterness of spirit, Mr.
Ferguson grew drowsy. His head nodded over
his folded arms. He grew more than drowsy. He
slept.

Mr. Ferguson does not know how long or how often
he slept and awakened. He remembers vaguely
that time and again he did something or other to the
slide-rest, or perhaps adjusted the tool for another
cut. It must have been past two in the morning any-
way, when the grand catastrophe overtook him, for
soon after came daylight in the little wood where he
slept till noon. But as he stood there, nodding over
his folded arms, he became aware of a great noise

62 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

in his ears and a stertorous rumble of disintegrating
material; and straightening up, he was horrified at
what he thought at first was a nightmare woven out
of his long toil and trouble. There was a spatter of
sparks from the tool as it broke and flew asunder, and
the whole fourteen-foot wheel was caught on the rest
and was rising, rising, like some dreadful destiny, and
hovering over him.

He stood in an ecstasy of expectation, petrified with
an unearthly desire to know what would happen
next. It rose and rose until balanced above him,
pausing while the last holding bolt was sheared from
the face-plate and fell into the heap of turnings be-
low. And then, in a sublime epicycloid al curve, it
descended, crashed lightly through the brick wall
behind the bench, smothering him in broken mortar
and plaster-dust, trundled leisurely across the yard,
and striking a prostrate cement-grinder that lay up-
ended awaiting repair, fell with a hollow boom among
the debris.

Mr. Ferguson reached for his coat in a sort of
trance. The thing was unbelievable, but it is your
true romantic who takes advantage of the un-
believable. With one look round at the ghostly
shadows of the little shop, he leaped upon the bench
and out through the hole in the wall. And in a few
minutes he was on the road leading up out of the
valley, breasting the hill in the small hours, seeking
afresh the adventures he craved, and musing with a

THE CRUSADERS 63

meditative eye upon the scene at which he regretfully
relinquished all idea of being present when day broke
and the result of his labours was discovered.

VI

Mr. Ferguson pauses as a couple of crashes resound
near by. We look at each other in some trepidation.
The Chief runs lightly half way down the ladder,
waves his hand in a complicated manner, and
rapidly ascends out of sight. Another crash — or
perhaps crash does not convey the meaning. At the
risk of appearing meticulous, one may say that
those Turkish bombs now dropping around the ship
sound to us below as if several thousand waiters,
each with a tray of glasses, had fallen down some
immense marble staircase in one grand debacle.

**Good Heavens! what's that?'' says Mr. Ferguson.

Mr. de Courcy mentions what it is, in his opinion.

**Fancy!" says Mr. Ferguson, staring hard at the
young gentleman.

I don't think these two have ever made each other
out yet. As a true romantic, Mr. Ferguson is doubt-
ful of Mr. de Courcy's credentials. He suspects
him of being one of those whom he calls **popinjays,"
and a conventional popinjay at that.

What Mr. de Courcy suspects, no man has ever
discovered. I sometimes think he is one of those
people who have no real existence of their own, who
are evoked only by a conventional necessity, and

64 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

who, if you were to go to them as you go to those
whom you love or hate, would be found to have
vanished. I am always prepared, when I open Mr.
de Courcy's cabin door, to find it empty, swept and
garnished, the bed neat, untouched, the washstand
closed, and a faint musty smell in the air. I cannot
believe in his existence save when I behold him; and
even then the long elegant fingers manipulating the
gold-tipped cigarette, the tolerantly benignant smile,
the jaunty pose, the mincing gait, suddenly assail me
without any corresponding conviction that there is
a human being concealed anywhere behind them.
He is uncanny that way, and Mr. Ferguson feels it
without understanding it.

As we cHmb the ladder, the Chief and the Third En-
gineer having relieved us until the bombs have ceased
dropping, Mr. Ferguson admits that the young fellow
**makes him afraid to live, sometimes'' — a cryptic
phrase. We lean on the bulwarks and watch the
performances of our airmen chasing the Turks. Or
is it the Turks chasing ours ? We are not sufficiently
versed in these warlike matters to decide. Ashore,
on the long strip of yellow sand, we see the British
Army on the march. We see the shrapnel bursting
into black plumes ahead of them, and the sharp
darts of flame from the ruins to the northward, where
the Turks are working a battery to cover their re-
treat. We see the shrapnel, and the quick wink of
heliographs from inland beyond the dunes. Some-

THE CRUSADERS 65

one points, and at length, after much searching, we
descry one of our machines, a mere dot in the blue,
over the Turkish fort.

This, mark you, is war. It has the precision of
clockwork. It is clockwork. The huge squat moni-
tor next us slowly swivels her turret toward the fort.
One of the fourteen-inch muzzles rears, moves up and
down and to and fro, as a man moves his neck in his
collar.

*'Now then,'* breathes Mr. Ferguson, "here we go

gathering nuts and may, nuts and may, nuts and

Gee! Now, I ask you," he says, after a pause be-
tween the explosion and the sudden rise of a tall
plume of yellow smoke over the Turkish fort, **Now,
I ask you, as one man to another, what is the use of
all this .? Think of those men in that "

A shrapnel shell fired by a methodical and business-
like Turkish gunner drops between us and a racing
motor-launch, bursts with a damp thump, and spat-
ters one or two fragments against the ship's sides.

Mr. Ferguson stops short, and looks offended..
"No, but is it" he insists, not sparing me his oratory..
"Here we are, wasting precious lives and money and
so on, all at the bidding of the capitalistic classes.-
Isn't it silly? Isn't it sickening? Isn't it wicked.^
Why shouldn't the workers '»'

"Below there! Stand by to hoist in planes!"
sings out the C.P.O.; and instantly we are thrust
aside as a swarm of men range themselves along the

66 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

rail. A plane flutters slowly over the water, one
float smashed, wings slit, observer looking rather sick
with a bullet in his thigh.

Well, he will get a medal, never fear. According
to Mr. Ferguson, every airman receives three medals
a week, just as he receives three meals a day. He
is so bitter about it, you would think it was a personal
grievance. That is his way. He thrives on griev-
ances, as no dull realist could ever thrive on good
fortune. The whole war is one gigantic grievance.
Society is a festering sore and humanity a bad joke,
posterity a bad dream. So he tells me.

Yet I have my own view. I have set it out here
in a way. I see Mr. Ferguson away ahead, at peace
let us hope, in some Home for Aged and Deserving
Seamen, and I hear him telling the children round
his wheel-chair how the Great War was fought, and
how he too was there, as witness the medal with the
faded ribbon on his breast. There is no bitterness in
his voice, nor any talk of Capitalism (children not
knowing such long words) or"popinjays"or^*grinding
toil." He has long since seen these things in a new
light. But he is faithful in this, that he paints the
irrevocable in all colours of fairyland. He will speak
of the ship and the crew — even of me — with fond
regret. He will lapse into silence as these memories
overwhelm him. The sharp ridge of his twisted
nose will glisten as it droops over his white beard, and
he will mumble that those were heroic days.

THE CRVSADERS 67

It may be that they are. It may be that, while we
plodding reaHsts go on, for ever preoccupied with our
daily chores, abstracting a microscopic pleasure from
each microscopic duty, your true romantic has the
truer vision, and beholds, afar off, in all its lurid
splendour and terrible proportions, the piquant ad-
venture we call Life.

THE CITY OF ENCHANTMENT

"It is a mystery to me," I heard the Surgeon re-
mark in his refined, querulous voice, "how many men
follow the sea all their Hves, go all over the world,
behold cities and men, and come home with minds
to all intents and purposes an absolute blank."

"Apropos of what?" I asked. I had been sitting
at the other end of the long ward-room table, and
missed the immediate application of this remark.
The stewards were setting coflFee on the table and
several men rose to catch the eight-o'clock liberty
launch. I moved up.

"Well," said the Surgeon, Hghting a cheroot, "it
is apropos of nearly every sailor Fve met since I
joined the Navy, and also of the occasional few that
came my way in practice ashore as well. But I
was speaking of Barrett, the second watch keeper.
Jolly good fellow, as you know, and has knocked
about a bit. But when I asked him to-day at tea if
he'd ever been in New Orleans, he said *yes, often',
and it was a rotten place. You see, I had been read-
ing a story which referred to the city. Now Bar-
rett's comment was typical I admit, but it was
neither illuminating nor adequate."

68

CITY OF ENCHANTMENT 69

"It doesn't follow," I observed, "that his mind
is a blank, nevertheless. You misunderstand our
mentality if you imagine you will get much local
colour out of any of us. I don't suppose, if you
interviewed a hundred men who had been there or
any other place, that you would get any other ans-

wer."

"I can tell you why," interjected suddenly a
man seated beside the Surgeon. I recognized him
as the engineer-commander of a special-service ship
lying near us at the canal buoys. He was a man
of middle age, and his neatly trimmed gray beard
and downward-drooping moustache gave him an air
of settled maturity and estabHshed character. He
was one of those men, I had already commented
to myself, who embody a generic type rather than,
an individual character. He might have been
anything, save for the distinguishing gold lace on
his sleeve — navigator, paymaster, or a competent
warrant-instructor of the old school. The Surgeon,
who was his host on this occasion, looked at him in-
quiringly.

"I can tell you why," repeated the engineer-
commander, taking out a cigarette case. "The
fact is," he went on after accepting a match, "young
men, when they go to sea, are romantic, but not
incurably so. I have rarely found any one," he
mused, smiling, "who was incurably romantic!
One can't be, at sea. It is no sense of grievance

70 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

which leads me to imagine most of us as having
had the romance crushed out of us. A young man's
progress through Hfe in our profession, so far from
resembHng the old-fashioned educational grand tour
through Europe, is much more like the movement
of a piece of raw material through a factory. He
is tortured and tested and twisted, subjected to
all sorts of racking strains to find out if he will stand
up under the stresses of life, and finally emerges
as an article good for one specific purpose and nothing
else.

"All our social, professional, and economic forces
tend to that consummation. We are not 'educated'
at all, in the sense that other professions, the medical
for instance, are educated; and the consequence is
we lack the habits of agreeable self-expression.
The bright romantic young fellow, just out of school,
becomes in a few years a taciturn and efficient ofl&cer,
who sends home monosyllabic letters from Cairo
or Bagdad or Yokohama, and dreams of keeping
chickens in Buckinghamshire. But don't imagine
his reticence is proof that he is a fellow of no senti-
ment. Each of us cherishes some romantic memory
of foreign parts — a girl, a city, a boarding-house,
a ship, or even a ship-mate — a memory that tinges
the fading past with iridescent glamour and of which
we cannot be persuaded to talk.

"I have had experiences of that nature in days
gone by. Like some of you, I was at sea in tramps,

CITY OF ENCHANTMENT 71

and collected the usual bundle of romantic memories-
What I was going to say was, that I knew New
Orleans. I knew it in what was to me an entirely
novel way. It was the first foreign place I ever lived
in ashore. I shall never forget the impressions it
made on me.

"I had never been even in the United States.
There had been a bad slump in freights that year.
I had just got my chief-engineer's hcense, and the
expense of living at home had eaten well into my
savings. When I got to Liverpool again to get a
job, I found myself along with a good many others.
I was Hke a hackney carriage. I had a license and
I had to crawl round and round for somebody to
hire me. Sounds strange nowadays when they
are sending piano-tuners and lawyers' clerks and
school teachers to sea and calHng them sailors. I
used to call in once a day at a little office where a
sort of benevolent association had its headquarters.
Most of us were always falling behind in our sub-
scriptions and the secretary would have nothing
to do with us. He was a big man with a bushy
black beard, and I never found him doing anything
else except playing bilhards. They had a bilHard-
table in the back room, and he and two or three old
chiefs of big Liverpool boats used to monopolize
it. It happened by some chance that my subscrip-
tion had been paid up at this time, so he had to
give me some attention. One day when I strolled

72 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

iwi he waved to me with his cue and I sat down until
^e had finished his stroke. He then said he knew of a
billet which would be the very thing for me. There
was a twin-screw passenger boat going out to Boston
'^» be taken over. She was going under the Cuban
flag, he told me. He had had a letter from a friend
in Belfast who was going Chief of her for the trip.
I could go Fourth, and they would pay my passage
home.

**Well it didn't sound very attractive, but I
decided at once. I would go. My journey to Bel-
fast took up a good deal of money I had left; in fact
I broke my last five-pound note when I bought my
ticket. I did not regret that. The fact was, I was
afflicted with a sudden desire to visit America.
I had been to all sorts of places like South Africa
and AustraHa and India, but they had not satisfied
me. I don't say I would have dismissed them all
as 'rotten' places, but they had made no appeal.
I had never really seen them, you understand. The
United States, at that particular juncture in my
life, did make some sort of subtle appeal to me. I
had heard of men who had made their fortunes out
there. I might tumble into something Hke that.
I had read — oh, the usual things boys read in Eng-
land. In the Sunday School at home they had had
*From Log Cabin to White House.' Mind you,
it wasn't material success I was thinking about so
much as the satisfaction of a queer craving I didn't

CITY OF ENCHANTMENT 73

half understand. You see I was brought up as most
of us were then, in an atmosphere of failure. There
was always about one man in four out of work.
The poorhouses were always well stocked with
sturdy paupers for whom the industrial system had
no use. We used to go about getting a job as though
it was a criminal offence. We never dreamed of
quitting. There were always fifty others waiting
to snatch it from us. Without knowing just why,
I had a restless craving to get away from all that. I
wanted to Hve in some place where one could breathe,
where the supply of labour was not so tremendously
in excess of the demand. So I said I would go. I
went over to Belfast and joined that ship. It was
November, and we took her out, flying light, into
winter North Atlantic.

**It was a terrible business. She was new, and her
trials, because of the bad weather, had been of the
sketchiest description. The skipper had secured
the contract to take her over for a lump sum, he
to find crew, food, and stores. He had not been
particularly generous in any of these. There were
just we four engineers and two mates. We had
our meals in the passenger saloon, an immense place
that glittered with mirrors and enamel and gilding,
but with only one table adrift on an uncarpeted
floor. It was curious to watch the steward emerge
from the distant pantry and start on the voyage
toward us bearing a tureen of soup. As the ship

74 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

rolled he would slide away to starboard over the
smooth surface of the teak planking, holding the
tureen horizontal as though he were carrying out
some important scientific experiment. Then, just
before he could bring up against the paneHng, she
would roll to port, and back he would come with
knees bent and a weather eye for a grip of the nearest
chair. When she rolled her rails right under, he
would have to set the thing on the floor and kneel
down with his arms round it, while we held on to the
racks and waited. They rigged him a lifeline later
on, but everything breakable was broken. One
day there was a terrible crash upstairs, and the skip-
per and mate jumped from their seats and ran
away up the grand staircase. The piano had been
carried away in the music room and had dashed into
a bookcase, end on. We had to get the crew in to
lash it fast with ropes.

"The engine room was full of leaking steam- and
water-pipes. Every bearing ran hot, and the stern
glands had been so badly packed that the water
was squirting through in torrents. And she was
twin-screw with no oilers carried. I used to spend
the four solid hours of my watch cruising round,
hanging on to hand-rails, emptying oil-feeders
upon her smoking joints. I had field-days every
day down in the bilges, cleaning shavings and waste
and workmen's caps out of the suctions. She rolled,
pitched, bucked, and shivered. She did everything

CITY OF ENCHANTMENT 75

except turn over. Twice the starboard engine broke
down and we had to turn round and go with the
weather until we could get it running again. I
used to call her the ship who lost herself. She was
all wrong. She had pumps no man could keep right,
tucked away in corners no human being above the
size of a Central African pigmy could work in. We
had no tools and no tackle. And nobody cared.
The one idea of everybody on board was to ger her
into Boston, grab our wages and passage money,
and run away as hard as we could go. I must say
it was rather demoraUzing for a young chap with
his name to make. Of course the job itself was
demoralizing. I pitied the chaps who were going
to serve in her under the Cuban flag. I carried
away no romantic memories : only a bad scald on my
chest, where a steam joint had blown out and shot
boiling water into my open singlet.

"And Boston made no particular impression
either. I was paid off, given a railroad ticket to
New York, and told to apply at a certain office for
a passage home. We were shoved aboard a train
which was red-hot one moment and ice-cold a
moment after. We were all in a bunch at one end
of the car and scarcely moved the whole time.
The skipper, who had gone through the day before,
met us at the Grand Central and took us down town.
I remember lights, a great noise of traffic, cries to
get out of the road, and a cross-fire of questions

^G HARBOURS OF MEMORY

about baggage. It was late afternoon. We roared
down town in a warm subway. I was struck by
the ceiling fans in the cars, and the stem preoccupa-
tion of a woman who sat next to me reading a book.
When we emerged on Broadway the wind was driving
the snow horizontally against our faces, and we
became white exactly as though someone had sprayed
us with whitewash through a nozzle.

"We fought our way down into a side street
and up an elevator into an office. I stood on the
edge of the little crowd trying to get some sort of
system into my impressions. I became aware of
words of disapproval: *No! that won't do!' *No;
I was promised a passage.' *You know perfectly
well. Captain,' and *What is it? A skin game?'
I discovered the Captain and a man in a carefully
pressed broadcloth suit arguing with the Mate and
the Chief. I gathered they wanted some of us to
waive our right to a passage home and sign on some
other ship. The Chief would have nothing to do
with it, and the Second and Third expressed their
refusal in violent language. You couldn't blame
them, for they were married. They were all married,
I beUeve. I was the only single adventurer among
them. They looked at me. I must have made some
inquiry for I heard the words *New Orleans. Hun-
dred dollars a month. Free ticket.'

"Well, I had no idea where New Orleans was at
that time. As far as I can recall I imagined it was

CITY OF ENCHANTMENT 77

somewhere in South America. That didn't matter.
I wasn't married and I had no reHsh for going back
to Liverpool and beginning the same weary old
chase for a job. I didn't have jobs thrown at me
in those days. I astonished them all by saying I'd
go. The Second said I must be crazy. The man
in the broadcloth suit beckoned me up and asked
for my papers. They seemed to satisfy him, and
he telephoned to another office about my ticket.
A small boy appeared, to take me over there, and I
followed him out. I never saw any of the others
again. The small boy led me along Broadway
and into a big office where I received a ticket for
New Orleans. Then I had to go back to the station
and get my baggage. The whole business went on
in a sort of exciting and foggy dazzle. Nothing
remains clear in my mind now except that nobody
regarded me as in the slightest degree of any im-
portance. Even the small boy, chewing for all he
was worth, cast me off as soon as he had steered
me and my baggage to another station, and left
me to wait for the train.

" I don't know even now how I managed to make
the mistake. I dare say such a thing would be im-
possible nowadays. Anyhow I discovered the next
morning I was on the wrong train. I beheve we
were bound for Chicago. I was rushing across a
continent in the wrong direction. I had never done
much railroad travelling anywhere — a few miles into

78 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

Liverpool, and a night journey from Cardiff to
Newcastle was about the extent of it. I was be-
wildered. The conductor told me to go on, now Td
started, and take the Chicago route. I suppose
I must have done that. I sat in a sort of trance,
hour after hour, watching the train plough through
immense tracts of territory of which I did not know
even the names, through great cities that flashed
and jangled before me, over rivers and through
mountain passes. I had to get out and scamper
over to other trains. I went hungry because I didn't
know there was anything to eat on board. My
razors were in my baggage and that was gone south
by some other route. I had nothing with me except
my papers and a box of cigarettes. I was in a day-
car and my fellow travellers were constantly chang-
ing. At last I fell into conversation with a man
about my own age. He it was who told me I could
get a berth in the sleeping car if I wanted one. He
took me out on the observation car at the end. He
was a reporter, he said. Showed me some wonderful
references from editors in California for whom he
had worked. He had a mileage ticket, and was
going from town to town looking for work. He
said the Mississippi Valley was *deader'n mud! No
enterprise.' I have often wondered what he thought
of me, a tongue-tied and reserved young Britisher
wandering about the United States.

"It came to an end at last — some time on the

CITY OF ENCHANTMENT 79

third evening, it must have been. The climate had
been getting milder and it struck me that we must
be approaching the equator. I began to wonder
what was in store for me. I felt as though I had
passed through a sort of tumultuous and bewildering
purgatory. I found myself in an atmosphere so
alien that I had no notion of where or how to catch
on. I wandered about a great barn of a station
trying to find somebody to attend to me. EngHsh
fashion, I wanted to find my baggage. Nobody
knew anything. Nobody cared. A big negro on
the box of a cab flourished his whip. In desperation
I got in, just in front of someone else. 'What you
goin*, sah?' he exclaimed dramatically. *Take
me to a hotel!' I replied. He made his whip crack
like a pistol-shot, and we rattled off into the darkness.
**0f course I felt better next day. I had an ad-
dress which the man in New York had given me. I
remember the name — Carondelet Street. I re-
member it because it was the first intimation of the
enchantment which New Orleans has always exer-
cised over me. There was a fantastic touch about
it which to me was deHghtful. I remember the
magic of that first walk through the city across
Royal Street, up Bourbon, across Canal and so into
Carondelet. There was something bizarre even about
the office I visited, too. I believe it had been origin-
ally built as the headquarters of some lottery, and it
was full of elaborate carving and marble sconces and

8o HARBOURS OF MEMORY

glittering mirrors and candelabra. They wanted
to know where I had got to. They had expected
me the day before. One would have imagined from
their impatience that I had kept a ship waiting, or
something equally terrible. Now that I had come,
they discovered they might not want me after all.
I waited for something definite. After some tele-
phoning, a man with a square sheet of pasteboard
tied over his forehead, to act as an eye-shade, told
me to go down to Louisa Street and see the chief of a
ship refitting down there.

"I got on a trolley car and rumbled down inter-
minable streets of wooden shacks, coming out abruptly
in front of a high bank over which I could see the
funnel and masts of a steamer. The Chief was a
benevolent old German who had spent twenty years
in the States. He patted me on the back and made
me sit down on his settee while he filled a great
meerschaum pipe. He had had a great deal of
trouble, he told me. I wasn't surprised when I
learned the facts. He had had a Swedish First
Assistant, a very fine man he affirmed, very fine
man indeed: good machinist and engineer, but he
could not manage the Chinks. It was a pretty
cosmopolitan crowd on that ship, I may tell you.
They had Chinese firemen, Norwegian sailors, and
officers of all nations. The Swedish First Assistant
was now replaced by a Dutchman. I inquired
what had become of the Swede, and the old gentle-

CITY OF ENCHANTMENT 8i

man informed me that the Chinks had done for him.
He had gone ashore one night and had not come
back. A day or two later, his body had been found
in the river. *But dey haf not found his head/ the
old chap told me, looking extremely gloomy.

"It was a startling beginning. I had been ship-
mates with men who had lost their heads, but not
with that disastrous finality. It appeared that I
was to go Second Assistant if I shaped well. Mr.
Blum was very anxious for me to shape well. 'You
haf been with Chinks?' he asked. I had. More
than that, I was able to say I liked them. 'That's
right,' he assented heartily; *if you like them, they
are all O. K.' And then, in answer to a query of
mine, he gave me an address in Lafayette Square,
where I could get lodgings. 'They will do you well
there,' he assured me.

"I went away to explore. I felt I was having
adventures. This was better than walking about
Liverpool in the rain trying to get a job. Here I
was succeeding to a billet which had become vacant
owing to a tyrannical Swede getting himself decapi-
tated in a highly mysterious fashion. Mind you,
there were other hypotheses which would account
for the Swede's tragic demise. I came to the conclu-
sion later that he probably fell off a ferry boat re-
turning from Algiers on the other side of the river
and got caught in the paddles. But at the time
the Chink theory was popular. I didn't care.

82 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

One doesn't, you know, when one is young and with-
out ties.

"And I explored. That old steamer which I
had been sent to join was as queer as her crew. She
had been built in Scotland twenty years before and
had sailed under half a dozen flags. She had been
bought by her present owners to keep her out of the
hands of competitors, and she only ran when one
of the others was laid up for overhaul. She was
always breaking down herself. Sometimes I was
weeks in New Orleans with her. Old Blum would
wave his meerschaum and wag his head sagely.
*Say nutting,' he would remark, when any comment
was thrown out about our indolent behaviour.

"He had a great friend who would come down
to see him, a Russian named Isaac. I suppose he
had another name but I never knew it. He was a
ridiculously diminutive creature with a stubby
moustache and round, coloured spectacles. He had
escaped from Siberia, they told me, and after many
wanderings had settled in New Orleans. He had
a brother who was still in prison at Omsk, and he
had some means of sending things to him. Some
day he was going to get him away. But the curious
thing about Isaac was his reputation for probity.
When we were paid at the end of the month, we
would hand our rolls to him and tell him to put them
in the bank. He had a greasy note book in which
he put down the totals among a lot of orders for

CITY OF ENCHANTMENT 83

soap and matches and overalls. He dealt in every-
thing. You could buy diamond rings and shoelaces,
shirts and watches, from him. Where he kept his
stock, if he had any, was a mystery. He flitted
about, smiHng and rubbing his hands, presenting
a perfect picture of rascally evasion. And every-
body trusted him. I never heard, but I have
not the slightest doubt he eventually rescued his
brother from Siberia. He had friends in San Fran-
cisco, Nagasaki, and Vladivostok. A queer char-
acter.

** I used to go off on tours through the old quarters
of the city by myself. I saw some astonishing
things. There was an old gentleman at our board-
ing house, for instance, who excited my curiosity.
I used to follow him up St. Charles Street after
dinner. He always came to a halt at Canal Street
before crossing, and would swing round sharply
as though he suspected someone spying upon him.
He never took any notice of me, however. Then
he would skip across and down Royal Street, turning .
into the Cosmopolitan. I used to go there myself,
for a good many EngHshmen patronized it. It
was known among us as the Monkeywrench for
some reason. This old chap would sit in a corner
with a tall glass of Pilsner before him and read
UAbeille, that funny little French paper that used
to say hard things about Lincoln during the Civil
War. His gray hair was brushed straight up off his

84 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

forehead, and he had a trim gray moustache and a
Napoleon tuft on his chin. About ten o'clock I
would see him coming out and marching down
Royal Street.

"One night I followed him, and saw him go into
one of the old curio shops that abound down there.
Well, one evening I had been wandering about near
the Cathedral and was coming up Royal Street
toward the Cosmopolitan. It was in darkness, for
the shops down there were shut, but there was a bril-
liant glare of light in front of the restaurant. It
was like watching a brightly lit stage from the dark-
ness of the auditorium. People were passing in
crowds, and a trolley car was making a great noise
grinding its way down the street. I saw the old
gentleman come out and pause, setting his big soft
hat firmly on his head. And then, to my astonish-
ment, a young man stepped swiftly out of the swing
doors and struck the old gentleman with a dagger
on the shoulder. He fell at once and the young man
began to walk away. The old gentleman rose on
his elbow, drew out a revolver and fired, twice. It
was like a rehearsal of a melodrama. The young
man fell against a passer-by. And then the in-
evitable crowd flew up from all sides and the narrow
street was blocked with people.

"I kept on the outside. I had no desire to be
drawn into the aflFair, whatever it was. A reporter
in the next room to mine told me it was a feud,

CITY OF ENCHANTMENT 85

and considered it the most ordinary thing in the
world. The newspapers treated it in the same way.
It was this matter-of-fact acceptance of what were
to me astounding adventures that induced that
curious impression of being in an enchanted city.
I would be strolling along taking my evening walk
in the dusk when I would catch sight of feminine
forms on a balcony, with mantillas and fans, and I
would hear the light tinkle of a guitar. Passers-by
had a disconcerting habit of flitting into long dim
corridors. I saw aged and dried-up people behind
the counters of stores which never seemed to have
any customers.

"I passed curio shops which appeared to be the
abodes of ghosts. I shall never forget my adventure
in the shop into which the old gentleman had been
accustomed to vanish. I needed a shelf of some
sort for my room, and I had a sudden notion of
investigating this place. The window was full of
the bric-a-brac which silts slowly down to the city
from the old plantations; silver ware, crucifixes,
bibelots, and candlesticks. It was away down past
the Cathedral and the fireflies were flitting among
the trees. I opened the door. A candle on a
sconce was the sole illumination of the little shop,
which was full of grandfather clocks. There must
have been a dozen of them there, tall, white-faced
spectres, and all going. I stood in astonishment.
It was as if I had intruded upon a private meeting

86 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

of the fathers of Time. I had an impression
that one of them, turned sHghtly toward his neigh-
bour, was about to make a weighty remark. He
cleared his throat with a hoarse rasp and struck
seven! And all the others, with the most musical
lack of harmony, joined in and struck seven as
well.

"I was so preoccupied with this preposterous
congregation that I had failed to notice the entrance
of a tall thin person who was regarding me with
austere disapproval. I wondered if she was go-
ing to strike seven. But she didn't. She wished
to know what I wanted, and when I told her, she
said she hadn't got it, and disappeared among the
tall clocks. I went out into the summer evening
wondering what tales those venerable timepieces
were whispering among themselves — ^tales of this
strange old city of enchantment, along whose streets
flitted the ghosts of a dead past, fleeing before the
roar of the trolley car and the foot of the questing
stranger.

"For that is the dominating impression of one
who dwells for a time in the city — an impression
of intruding among mysteries of which one has no
right to the key. You read Cable and become aware
of other ghosts with which he has peopled the fantas-
tic vistas of the French Quarter and the reaches of
that enigmatic waterway up which sail the great
ships with their cargoes of coff'ee and tropic fruit.

CITY OF ENCHANTMENT 87

You begin to wonder whether you are the only real
live human being doing business in that part of the
world.

**I found a few, of course, as time went on. It so
happened I came across one, a Scotchman too, who
gave me that phrase — a city of enchantment. He
kept a second-hand book-store along a little stone-
flagged alley off St. Charles Street, an alley where
there couldn't possibly be any business. I suppose
he had some sort of mail-order trade with distant
libraries, but he always seemed to part with a volume
with intense reluctance. I had a lot of time on my
hands, and was fond of reading; and he struck a
bargain with me to bring the books back and he would
make no charge for them. Some of his books he
wouldn't sell at all. I got into the habit of dropping
in during the evening for a talk. It became quite a
club. There was an elderly Yankee from Connecti-
cut, a lawyer who had been moving gently about the
Union for years and had come to a gentle anchorage in
the Crescent City. His ostensible occupations were
chewing tobacco and commenting upon the fluctuat-
ing chalk-marks on the board at the Cotton Ex-
change. There was a fat Irishman who spent a
good deal of time writing and printing ferocious
pamphlets deahng with Home Rule and Holy Ire-
land. There was I, a lonely young Englishman, be-
calmed in a foreign port. And there was a sharp-
nosed little man who enveloped himself in mystery

88 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

and took a malicious pleasure in evading identifi-
cation.

"It was one evening when the twilight — ^which was
half an hour earlier in that narrow flagged passage
than in the open street — ^was falling, and filling the
old shop with strange shadows, that I heard our
host's voice saying: *Yes, this is a city of enchant-
ment. It catches the imagination. As we drift
about the world we grow weary of the futility of
human life, but we are urged on to fresh voyages
and travels. Always we see a better prospect
ahead. We are deceived, it is not so. We sigh for
our native villages and dream of golden futures. So
it goes on, until by chance we come to this strange
city of enchantment, built upon the drowsy marshes
of a great river, and — we stop ! We go no farther.
We become incurious about the future and we look
back upon the past without regret. Is it not so.f*
We are all Hke that. A city of enchanted transients.
Lotus-eaters of the Mississippi. Hobos of elevated
sentiments who lack the elementary effort to move
on!"

**0f course, he was joking, but there was a certain
acrid sediment of truth in the stream of his elo-
quence. It gave me a key to the mystery which
seemed to brood over the city during the long
months of humid heat. It directed my attention to
the bizarre contrast between this sombre melancholy
and the sharp crackling modern business-life that

CITY OF ENCHANTMENT 89

roared up Canal Street and burst into a thunderous
clangour in the vast warehouses on the levee, where
the cotton and sugar and coffee and fruit came and
went, and the river spread its ooze among the piles
below. And it evoked a potent curiosity in the man
himself and the folks who had come to a stop, as he
put it, around him.

"The sharp-nosed Httle man remarked to me as

we went away one evening, that our friend B was

'well posted'. That was the unsophisticated verdict
of one who, as I say, took a malicious pleasure in
shrouding himself in mystery. He compensated us
for this by exhibiting a startling famiharity with the
private lives of everybody else we had ever heard of,
from the President of the Republic to the old Chief of
my ship. It was his pleasure to appear suddenly
before us as we sat in the back of that old bookstore.
He would disappear in the same enigmatic fashion.
He would recount to us dark and fascinating stories
of the people who passed the window as we sat within.
He would wait by the door until some stranger had
gone, and then with a muttered excuse, slink out and
be seen no more.

"He told us what he called the facts of the feud of
which I had seen the dramatic denouement in Royal
Street. The young chap was a Hungarian, son
of a count who had sent him a remittance on receipt
of a letter every month from the old gentleman, a
Creole connection. The letter was to certify that

90 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

the son was in America. For some reason the old
gentleman, who owned enormous property but
had no money, had declined to sign the certificate.
The young man had calmly forged it. There had
been a quarrel. So our mysterious sharp-nosed
little friend told us. He knew why the house in
Melisande Street had been closed, and conveyed the
information in a thrilling whisper behind a curved
palm. He hinted at desperate doings going on
almost at our elbows in the dark corners of the old
city; Chinamen tracked to their death by minions
of secret societies in MongoHa, Italian peanut
vendors who were in the pay of Neapolitan high-
binders, Englishmen shadowed by Mexican assas-
sins. We would sit in the heavy dusk in our shirt-
sleeves, the occasional glare of a match illuminating
our listening faces, while he revealed to us the secrets
by which we were surrounded.

"Did we believe him? I did. I was young, and
it was as though he fulfilled for me the veiled promise
of the old city to tell me its story and envelop me
in the glamour of its enchantment. I would like
to believe him still, but I cannot. He is too im-
probable for me now. Sometimes I wonder whether
he ever existed, whether he did not evolve out of
the heavy exhalations of that swampy delta where
so many mysteries lie buried in the dark mud below
the tall grasses, a sort of sharp-nosed transient Puck,
intriguing our souls with tales out of a dime novel.

CITY OF ENCHANTMENT 91

and tickling our imaginations with a bogus artistry.
I would like to believe him still; but as the years
pass I have an uneasy suspicion that he too had
fallen a victim to the spirit of the place, and was
evoking, for our delectation, his own pinchbeck
conception of a city of enchantment."

A NEW AND ENTERTAINING METHOD OF
REVIEWING BOOKS HIGHLY RECOM-
MENDED TO THE PROFESSION

Of course, the point of the joke is that the reviewer,
in the present case, is not a reviewer at all, but, as
described in a former article, a Lieutenant of Reserve.
The regular blown-in-the-glass reviewers must not
imagine that he is trying to do them out of a job.
On the contrary, the most probable upshot will be
that the regular, blown-in-the-glass style of re-
viewing books will be seen to hold the field if we
are to get anywhere. For it is presumed that these
gentlemen really are trying to get somewhere with
their criticism, that they are shooting to kill, and not
merely announcing new books. . . .

In the first place, I ought to confess that I
envy the professional reviewer. I figure him,
seated in the monastic calm of a richly appointed
library, the walls gleaming with the russet and
blue and gold of leather bindings — gifts from
wealthy authors in token of their gratitude; a bust
of Plato behind the door on the Encyclopaedia
Britannica case; a broad heavy table covered with
the reviews of two continents, and a pile of new books

92

REVIEWING BOOKS 93

— for review. I figure him seated in his great chair,
a man of noble forehead and deep discriminating
eyes. His dress is rich yet dishevelled, and he toys
with a gold-tipped cigarette as he prepares his
thoughts for transcription to the big pad of fine
paper before him. He is rich and respectable. The
silence of the great room is interrupted for a mo-
ment as his daughter, a being of matchless beauty,
trips into the sanctum and, seated on the arm of
his chair, covers his fine iron-gray head with her own
tumbled golden tresses. He signs the check, of
course, as I figure him, his left arm encircling the
slender waist. Another moment, and she is gone.
He smiles. This reviewer has a charming smile.
He reaches for his note-pad and writes, still smiling.
I look over his shoulder (in imagination). There
is a golden hair on his coat. He has written: "True
happiness consists in avoiding those who are getting
more out of life than we are." He thinks he has
thought of something new, and smiles again, deciding
to bring it into the article he is about to write.

Now it is no abuse of language to say that, in
the above picture of a reviewer, I am not describing
myself. The present writer is neither rich nor
respectable. His dress is the uncomfortable white
uniform of a naval officer in the tropics, a uniform
designed by a non-smoker, a non-reader, a non-
writer, and a nonentity generally, I should say.
Even the "big pad of fine white paper" is out of the

94 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

picture in this case, for such a thing has not been
seen on the ship for months. Indeed, it is quite
on the cards that this article will be finished on a
naval signal pad, which will certainly confirm it as a
novel way of reviewing books.

Nor is the "richly appointed library" to be found
in our vicinity. In passing, it is humiliating to re-
flect how very few hours I have ever spent in richly
appointed libraries. Some ships have libraries, it
is true, securely locked up, so that you have to
wait meekly upon some pug-nosed autocrat of a
steward who stands just behind you, breathing down
your neck, while you endeavour to find a congenial
volume among the roach-ravened stacks of bygone
best sellers. But our ship has no library save a
mahogany cabinet in the chart room containing
some mysterious volumes bound in sheet-lead, so
that when flung overboard to prevent their falHng
into the hands of the enemy, they will sink. Our
ship has very little of anything, after the manner of
ships in which the fittings, from the wireless to
the engines, are of destroyer pattern. There is a
legend that when anybody gets up in our ward-room,
everybody else has to rise to let him move round.
The letter-copying press is on the ice chest, and
the rifle rack is bolted against the chronometer
case. So there is no library. Therefore, when I
was bitten with the notion that I wanted to write a
book review, I decided to do it ashore.

REVIEWING BOOKS 95

To explain how a Lieutenant of Reserve, in Levan-
tine waters, becomes possessed of anything to re-
view, it should be said that the editor of a maga-
zine, with the sagacity pertaining to editors, had
sent over a bale of new publications, deeming it
possible that said Lieutenant might go mad for
lack of mental stimulus, and so bring shame to
the ancient and honourable company of men of
letters. A Maltese steward, suborned for the purpose,
dumps these volumes into a canvas bag and goes
ashore with them — leaving them in the care of my
good friend M. Eskenazi, licensed money-changer,
who has a microscopic Bureau de Change under
the high arcades of the Passage Kraemer, which
runs beneath the Hotel Splendide Palace, and de-
bouches upon the Rue Parallel. It is to this same
lofty and multitudinous Passage Kraemer — ^when
the westering sun, just before he sinks down and sil-
houettes Cordelio on the other side of the Gulf,
black against red-gold, sends his level, bhnding rays
from end to end of the arcades — that I repair with
pipe and note-book, and sit down at a particular
table in a nook opposite the microscopic office of
M. Eskenazi. He regards me through his pigeon-
hole, and we exchange salutations as I call the waiter
from the cafe behind me by clapping my hands.

M. Eskenazi is much occupied. While I am
consuming a lemon-and-mint ice cream, he sells
some opium to the chief officer of a Japanese vessel;

96 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

an ounce of hashish to a venerable old Russian
with quavery knees and an incredibly fine panama
hat; and two postal-cards to a petty officer of an
Italian battleship. He changes two one-pound
notes into Turkish paper for a naval oflBcer from our
flag-ship; advises a shady-looking personage, who
seems to be a Scandinavian, upon some recondite
subject; shoos away sixteen small boys and girls
who are begging round his window; and buys, for
spot cash, a magnificent pair of German prismatic
field-glasses from an individual who has evidently
not washed for weeks, and who probably stole them
from the dead body of some Turkish oflBcer lying
under a cloud of vultures in the gorges of the moun-
tains behind the city. And all the while the people
of Smyrna pass to and fro in throngs; rich and poor,
high and low. Gentile, Jew, and Greek, Ottoman,
Armenian, Balkan, and Muscovite, Latin, Levantine
and Teuton, young and old, virtuous and so forth —
a motley swarm. Here then is the correct milieu,
to my mind, for the reviewing of books — a seat
at a cafe in the very heart of the city, a front stall
in the great theatre of life.

M. Eskenazi, seizing the opportunity afforded
by a lull in his multifarious deahngs, comes over
smiling, the canvas bag in his hand, to drink his
mastic and discuss the news. The Turkish pound
is down again, he remarks pensively, by which he
means that said Turkish pound, worth four dollars

REVIEWING BOOKS 97

in 1914 and a dollar-twenty-five yesterday, has
dropped to a dollar fifteen. Silently I hand him a
few English notes, and he goes over and extracts
the current exchange from a small but formidable
safe buried under a heap of Persian mats. I am
his friend, he says, so he gives me the benefit of his
knowledge. Money-changers, and Jewish money-
changers in particular, seem to have a bad name
in history. I recall an incident in the temple at
Jerusalem. . . . Personally I prefer them to
Pharisees. M. Eskenazi is a Jewish money-changer.
His ancestors fled from Toledo in Torquemada's
day and settled here in Smyrna, where the benighted
Ottomans suflFered them to dwell and prosper.
He speaks Spanish in his home; English to me;
French, Greek, Turkish, and Armenian in his busi-
ness. He resembles a composite portrait of Lord
Kitchener and the Earl of Derby, and is a most
entertaining companion.

M. Eskenazi enters with zest into my plan for
reviewing books out in the open, as it were, for he
imagines that thereby I am earning immense sums
of money. He understands money. He knows
a great many ways of making money. This writing
business intrigues him. It is, to him, a novel idea.
They actually pay you for it, he murmurs. An
extraordinary country, America! What gets him
is that, in America, an editor can pay money. Now
here, an editor is on the same social and financial

98 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

plane as a shoe-shine boy or an itinerant peanut
vendor. He is for ever behind with his rent. He
spends much of his time in jail, for attacking the
Government, or the powers, or because he cannot
pay his debts. He is a shadowy creature, having
no continuous abode. His journals have their day,
and cease to be. A small hand-printing press,
a bale of dirty white paper, and a tin trunk full of
miscellaneous Hellenic, Ottoman, and Latin type,
all piled on a donkey cart — and he is away to a
distant quarter of the city to start life afresh. He
resembles a Bolshevik who has got out of touch with
the treasury department. In summer he wears
an unfortunate suit of near-linen and a battered
straw hat; in winter a mangy rabbit-fur-lined coat
and a derby. When I tell M. Eskenazi that some
editors in America earn as much as a dollar a day
and are received in society, he is astounded. Evi-
dently a country of illimitable resources. He
finishes his mastic, lights a cigarette, and hurries
over to attend to two customers, while I open the
canvas bag and examine, one by one, the books
I am about to review.

It seems almost to savour of magic, after our dis-
cussion of money, to draw out first (and quite un-
wittingly) "Midas and Son'* by Stephen McKenna.
The easy, sumptuous and, rapid modern style of
Mr. McKenna depends for its success upon a strong,
non-literary central idea. I mean, no one would

REVIEWING BOOKS 99

read this sort of book for its style alone. As far
as I can make out there is no such central idea in
** Midas and Son" as there undoubtedly was in
"Sonia." "Sonia" was a remarkable book in many
ways; not the least remarkable being the cool
revelation of graft as practised among the patrician
English. It was a picture, not only of two contrasted
Englands, but of two violently antagonistic social
forces at work in a disintegrating community. Such
a book is bound to be interesting. But a book which
has for its theme simply immense wealth cannot be
interesting. Money in itself is the most unin-
teresting subject on earth. M. Eskenazi is of this
opinion. I have gathered from him that granted
even if money does talk, which he doubts, its con-
versation is not entertaining out of office hours.
Money, he holds, is an admirable servant and an
abominable master. And one does not take an
absorbing interest in servants.

Apart from this, as I watch the cosmopolitan
throng surge to and fro through the Passage Kraemer,
as I note our esteemed admiral shaking hands with
an equally esteemed Italian general at the entrance
of the Hotel Splendide Palace, it occurs to me that
this latest book of Mr. McKenna's is a good example
of the sort of fiction we got used to during the war.
Perhaps the last of its race. It is nervous in ac-
complishment. One gets "rattled," at times, read-
ing it. It is obviously the work of a member of

loo HARBOURS OF MEMORY

the cultured governing classes. Intensely dramatic
moments are hurried over — not because they are
inartistic, but because the behaviour of the char-
acters has become repugnant to the good form of
the cultured governing classes. And it carries
on what seems to have become almost a craze with
some novelists — the habit of introducing characters
from previous novels. M. Eskenazi cannot assist
me much here, but I am inclined to believe his
€thics would not admit this sort of thing in trade.
One would think, too, when a novel is finished, that
an author would be only too glad to turn his char-
acters out of doors to shift for themselves. If I
had been consulted about the League of Nations,
I should certainly have stood out for a clause abolish-
ing trilogies. . . . But of course this is no way
of reviewing books.

M. Eskenazi, I observe, is accommodating two
lengthy bluejackets in American uniform, as I
draw out another volume, which proves to be Cecil
Chesterton's ** History of the United States.'' M.
Eskenazi has a high opinion of the United States
Navy. An American battleship in the harbour,
with fourteen hundred men on board, has been
of considerable profit to him as a vendor of Turkish
carpets, Persian rugs, and so forth. He says the
American naval man has two shining qualities —
he has money to spend, and he spends it. They
certainly satisfy the eye, these husky gentlemen.

REVIEWING BOOKS loi

in their spotless rig and with their extremely brown
faces and candid eyes. I feel very glad that an
Englishman has at length been found who consid-
ered the history of the United States worth writing
about. If some modern Diogenes, instead of wander-
ing round looking for such a common object as
an honest man, had tried to find an Englishman
who had read the history of the United States, he
would have had to give up in despair.

There is an additional reason for gratitude.
Ever since G. K. Chesterton wrote "A Short History
of England," I have been terrified lest he should
deal the United States the same devastating blow.
I have a theory that Cecil, who had been to America,
pleaded with his more famous brother to spare a
young and confiding nation, to give them a chance,
and that G. K. C, with magnificient generosity,
consented !

For if he had written this book it would have been
all wrong. Without yielding to anybody on earth
in my admiration for G. K. Chesterton — (did I not
discover him in the Saturday Daily News nearly
twenty years ago.^) — I am quite sure there is nobody
on earth less fitted to understand or write about the
United States. Cecil Chesterton, on the other hand,
was just the man. The book is advertised in
England as "the ideal short history for the general
reader.'' It is just that. American readers must
remember that the "general reader" in England

I02 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

has never heard of the Ku Klux Klan or Mason and
Dixon's Line. His ideas of a Chautauqua are as
vague as his conception of a barbecue or a picayune.
The terms "native son," "creole/' "carpet-
bagger," "hoosier" and so on, mean nothing to him.
The famous "James boys" and the equally famous
brothers William and Henry James, are all one to
him. Daniel Webster, he believes, wrote a diction-
ary. Well, if he didn't, what about it? Neverthe-
less, this same "general reader" in England, whom
I ask Americans to pity as they would pity a denizen
of Central China or the Congo, has some sparks
of good in him. He is not altogether unregenerate.
He hasn't had a chance, so far. Henry the Eighth's
wives and the Boston Tea Party have been too much
for him. Even now he has an uneasy notion that
he is not well informed about this nation across the
sea which, in such an incredibly brief period, trained
and equipped and flung nineteen hundred thousand
men into France to aid us, in the hour of our terrible
need, to hold and throttle and beat the ugly life
out of the barbarian hordes. He has heard some-
where that these men are of his own race. And
now here is a book, written by a private in the British
army in a splendidly clear and forcible style, a style
such as G. K. Chesterton might write if he were
only content to let words speak, instead of making
them do ground and lofty tumbling, as well. The
outlook for the general reader is bright. I look

REVIEWING BOOKS 103

forward to referring casually, in English company, to
Aaron Burr, or the Battle of New Orleans, without
being confronted by that icy stare of non-comprehen-
sion which is one of the marvels of our island story.
Apropos of this, the very next book I fish out of my
canvas bag is Robert Cortes HolHday's "Walking-
Stick Papers." Here, as Squeers remarked, is
richness. It used to be a brag of mine, in the days
when I was a drummer in Merrie England, that I
could not only design and build an engine, but I
could sell it afterward. Mr. Holliday has sold
books as well as written them. I like this sort of
thing. The great trouble with so many of our liter-
ary men is that they can't do anything else. And
it is one of the peculiarities of the artist and the
saint that their equipment comes by other roads.
George Moore, who is of course an artist and not a
saint, seems to reckon his career in Paris as a painter
a sad failure. It seems to me, after an attentive
and admiring study of his works, that he owes as
much to his training as a painter as to his early
experiences as a stable boy in his father's stud.
But apart from the piquant flavour lent to the
"Walking-Stick Papers" by the author's experi-
ences as a bookseller, the essays appeal to me because
it is just this kind of writing which our younger
men in England cannot do. There is a nimbleness
of mind — a freedom from silly, mawkish, conven-
tional forms — which does not seem to flourish in our

I04 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

humid and chilly air. An Englishman never takes
his collar off when he is writing. How can you
expect him to show you his soul ?

Another example of the same American genius
for this literary gambolling comes out of the bag —
Christopher Motley's "Rocking Horse." Comes
out prancing and curveting, and neighing and shying
— obviously at the bizarre surroundings of the Pas-
sage Kraemer, with its startling costumes and bril-
liant colours. Shies at more than this, for the rock-
ing horse, be it understood, is a domestic animal.
Only respectable married folk keep rocking horses.
One recalls Hugh Walpole's laconic comment when
Mr. HolHday said he was married. "All Americans
are," murmured Mr. Walpole. And so it seems.
Late last night at Costi's Restaurant in the Rue de
Make, a party of young American naval officers
one and all confessed that they were married.
Which is most edifying, but has nothing to do with a
review of books. What is left in the canvas bag.?

John Keats has recorded his feelings in a famous
sonnet when he discovered Chapman's "Homer,"
comparing his joy to that of some lonely watcher
of the skies when a new planet swims into his ken.
At the risk of making an astronomical blunder, I
prefer to call Ellen La Motte a star rather than a
planet. It may not be so scientific but it is more
polite and more true.

"CiviHzation," a collection of short stories dealing

REVIEWING BOOKS 105

with the European in China, is one of those books
which sHp into circulation without a vast deal of
clatter, and establish themselves firmly in the
inner affections of a number of people who know
good work from bad. They do not become best
sellers, as far as I am aware, and quite possibly
the warm-hearted people who support best sellers
may want to know just what there is in a book like
** Civilization" to rouse such emotions among the
cognoscenti. Alas! cognoscenti are always being
pestered to give their reasons. Many cognoscenti
have grown weary of explaining and remain in
hiding, quietly enjoying the fruits of their enter-
prise. Of course, no such behaviour is possible to a
reviewer. He must tell why he likes a book or
cease to be a reviewer. Well, the secret is a technical
one, and it is called ** atmosphere." How this at-
mosphere is produced, I don't quite know. If I did,
I should produce it myself and so acquire an endur-
ing fame. I admit this is not the correct sort of
thing to say in a review. In England, at any rate,
a reviewer invariably leaves on the mind of the
reader a notion that he (the reviewer) could have
written the book himself and written it better, with a
further comforting assurance that he (the reader)
could, with a little practise, do it too. In this way
the reviewer is glorified, the reader is gratified,
and the author, poor wight, is frequently tempted
to commit suicide.

io6 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

While I am reaching to the bottom of the canvas
bag for the remaining volume, a young person
appears among the hundreds of young persons
passing to and fro, who is singularly apropos. She
advances, and forestalling my intention, drags a
chair up to my table and sits down. I say she is
singularly apropos, because the remaining book is
Conrad's "Arrow of Gold." M. Eskenazi joins
us during a lull in his affairs. I order ices, mastic,
and coffee. We converse, while I turn once again
the pages of Mr. Conrad's extraordinary romance.
The newcomer does not speak English. Lest you
should form an erroneous estimate of her qualifica-
tions as a heroine, let me add that in addition to
her native tongue she speaks French, German,
Italian, Russian, Greek, Turkish, and Spanish.
She regards the pile of books on the table without
any discernible emotion. Books to her are nothing.
She likes illustrated journals of fashions, especially
les modeles americains. Politics, as we know them,
are nothing to her. Her orientation differs from
ours. She loves the English, the Americans, and
the Germans, and she hates the Greeks, the French,
and the Armenians. She has never been farther
north than Sophia, farther west than Athens, or
farther east than Constantinople. Books to her
are nothing. Yet her viewpoint is of value, since
men to her are everything and out of men books
are made. And being polite, she is good enough

REVIEWING BOOKS 107

to inquire what is the book which I have in my hand.
It is "The Arrow of Gold." And what is it about?

This places me in a quandary because, although
I have read the book with attention, I am not at all
clear what it is about. It is a dreadful confession
for a confirmed and lifelong Conradian to make,
but I have no clear notion of anything happening
in the story. It is dreadful because, if there is one
artist alive to-day who can actually, as Meredith
Nicholson says, push a character through the door
and let him speak for himself, it is Conrad. Many
of his characters are going about to-day, for it is
rational to assume that if an author's creations
really are creations, one may easily meet them.
I met several of them at a hotel in Malta. There
was Kurtz, from "Heart of Darkness," not dead
at all, in the full-dress uniform of a Russian imperial
guardsman. There was Schomberg, disguised as
a Swiss automobile salesman. There was Captain
MacWhirr, from "Typhoon," in the uniform of the
Royal Naval Reserve, breathing heavily at a table
by himself, and remarking, when interrogated, that
he had no remembrance of ever going through a
typhoon. "We used to have dirty weather at
times, of course," he murmured.

But most of the characters in "The Arrow of
Gold" are too thin ever to materialize hke that.
As opposed to Miss La Motte's "Civilization" with
its indubitable atmosphere and mastery of illusion,

io8 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

"The Arrow of Gold" seems to have been written
designedly without atmosphere. The characters
remain suspended in a kind of passionless ether.
And this leads me to enunciate a daring theory —
that Mr. Conrad, in this book, has endeavoured
to evoke some transient memories of a too-long-
vanished past. There is always this danger beset-
ting the artist, because some people and scenes
seem to have the faculty of imposing themselves
upon his imagination without bringing with them
any adequate capacity for transmutation into
terms of art. They are, if one may venture a
phrase, brilliant and sterile phantoms. They are as
vivid as a flash of lightning in the memory, yet one
can do nothing with them. Such a figure is Dona
Rita, in **The Arrow of Gold." Such a place is the
Street of the Consuls in Marseilles. One can see Mr.
Conrad trying to galvanize her into some sort of
life corresponding to the hfe of humanity, but she
won*t move. She does nothing comprehensible
from beginning to end. She is a phantom. One
never believes in Monsieur George's love for her at
all. One struggles to visualize the original of
this charming and exasperating being, seen in the
dazzling sunlight of Marseilles — no sooner seen than
gone.

So, too, with the Street of the Consuls. It re-
minds me of the Rue d'Aventure in Marseilles, which
I beheld in the small hours, one night last winter.

REVIEWING BOOKS 109

A high, narrow, hermetically sealed sort of street,
with flag-poles sticking out of upper windows, and
immense black doors that seemed closed for all
eternity. It was bright moonlight and the line
of shadow lay exactly down the middle of the road-
way. I had an appointment with a torpedo lieuten-
ant who spoke no French, and who had no notion
of the position of our ship in the immense harbour.
And as I stood at the top of this sombre and menacing
street of adventure, a large rat crept out of the
moonlit gutter and started along the street. And
then another. After garbage. I stood entranced,
for rats do not forage in the streets in England,
And I became aware suddenly of someone who had
managed to emerge from one of those immense and
seemingly immovable portals — a figure in an opera
cloak and French top-hat, and very drunk. A
long white kid glove dangled from his hand and he
waved it gently toward me as he swayed across the
street. All without a sound, save a fiacre rattling
out of the Cannebiere just beyond. Swayed into the
middle of the street, where the shadow lay like some-
thing solid and impregnable, the fingers of the long
white kid glove dragging on the ground — when he
saw a rat, and giving a sudden lurch, vanished for-
ever into the shadow. The fiacre rattled louder;
and turning, I discovered the torpedo lieutenant
inside of it, very relieved, to find me after all.

Now here are the beginnings of tales like "The

no HARBOURS OF MEMORY

Arrow of Gold," tales founded upon vivid but un-
substantial memories. I shall never forget that
man in the opera cloak with his preposterous air
of mysterious gaiety and his long white kid glove.
He will remain with me for ever, an interesting,
brilliant, and sterile phantom.

In the meanwhile I have been trying to explain
the essential psychology of Dona Rita, that elusive
and shadowy being about whom, presumably, "The
Arrow of Gold" is written. Dona Rita kept goats
on the Spanish mountains when she was a child. My
companion gets that with facility: she kept sheep and
helped her mother on the hills near Sophia. Yes,
bare- footed and bare-legged, looking down now for a
moment at the high French heels of her white shoes.
Well, then. Dona Rita is now rich and unhappy.
Pourquoi? Does she not love that homme de mer.
Monsieur George? Humph! She sets one elbow
among the dishes and regards me attentively from
under the brim of an immense straw hat trimmed
with osprey. Les hommes de mer^ she murmurs,
and looks away toward the kaleidoscopic procession
passing through the Passage Kraemer. She forgets
"The Arrow of Gold." Books are nothing to her,
as I expect they were nothing to Dona Rita. And
like Dona Rita she is one of those beings who inspire
love, who disturb the dim and ineluctable memories
of the past, and who give to the most transient of our
illusions the aspect of a grave resolution of the soul.

REVIEWING BOOKS iii

" She was supremely lovable," says Monsieur George
of Dona Rita, and therein he compresses the theme
of the book. Perhaps it was an error to assume
that none of these characters can walk the soHd
earth. Perhaps the arrow of gold finds its mark.
Perhaps Dona Rita waits here, while I, pauvre
homme de mer, restore the canvas bag of books
to the care of M. Eskenazi.

So few women are "supremely lovable."

ON A BALCONY

There are some men whom a staggering emotional
shock, so far from making them mental invahds for
life, seems, on the other hand, to awaken, to galvan-
ize, to arouse into an almost incredible activity
of soul. They are somewhat in the same cast as
the elderly expressman who emerged from a subway
smash untouched, save that he began to write free
verse. Those who do not read free verse may
consider the comparison too flippant. But the
point must be insisted on, that there is far too much
talk of love and grief benumbing the faculties,
turning the hair gray, and destroying a man's
interest in his work. Grief has made many a man
look younger.

Or, one may compare the emotions with wine.
The faculties of some men become quiescent with
wine. Others are Hke Sheridan writing "The School
for Scandal" light on through the night, with a
decanter of port at his elbow getting emptier as the
pages (and Sheridan) got full; or like Mozart drinking
wine to stimulate his brain to work, and employing
his wife to keep him awake at the same time.

112

ON A BALCONY 113

There was a singular disparity between the above
trivial reflections and the scene upon which they
were staged. I was seated on the balcony outside
my room on the third floor of the Grand Hotel
Splendide Palace at Smyrna. I was to leave that
afternoon for Constantinople, having been reheved,
and I had been watching with some attention the
arrival of the destroyer upon whose deck, as a passen-
ger, I was to travel.

I was distracted from this pastime by the growing
excitement in the street below. Greek troops,
headed by extremely warlike bands, were marching
along the quay, gradually extending themselves
into a thin yellowish-green line with sparkling
bayonets, and congesting the populace into the
fronts of the cafes. A fantastic notion assailed
me that my departure was to be carried out with
mihtary honours. There is an obscure memoran-
dum extant in some dusty office-file, in which I am
referred to as "embarrassing His Majesty's Govern-
ment"— the nearest I have ever got to what is
known as public life. The intoxication engendered
proved conclusively that public life was not my metier^

But I was not to be deceived for long on this
occasion. Motor-cars drove up, bearing little flags
on sticks. A Greek general, a French admiral, an
Itahan captain, and a British lieutenant of the
Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve jumped out of
their respective chariots and, after saluting with

114 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

the utmost decorum, shook hands with the utmost
cordiaHty. Looked at from above, the scene was
singularly like the disturbance caused by stirring up
a lot of ants with a stick.

By this time it was perfectly obvious that some-
thing more than the departure of a mere Heutenant
of reserve was in the air. I knew that Royal Naval
Volunteer lieutenant, and the hope, the incipient
prospect, of another taste of public Hfe died within
me. After all, I reflected (and this is how I led up
to the other reflections already recorded), after
all, one must choose between Obscurity with Effici-
ency, and Fame with its inevitable collateral of
BluflT. There is a period, well on toward middle
life, when a man can say such things to himself and
feel comforted.

I knew that Royal Naval Volunteer lieutenant,
and I began to recall some remarks he had made the
previous evening at dinner. He had said something
about some big man coming. This was at the British
Naval Residency, which was to be found, by the
intrepid, in the Austrian Consulate. The British
Naval Residency filled the Austrian Consulate
very much as a penny fills the pocket of a fur over-
coat. You could spend a pleasant morning wander-
ing through the immense chambers of the Austrian
Consulate and come away without having discovered
any one save a fat Greek baby whose mother washed
in some secret subterranean chamber.

ON A BALCONY 115

I was supposed to be messing at the British Naval
Residency. I had even been offered by my country's
naval representative (this same Royal Naval Volun-
teer lieutenant) the use of any room I Hked, to sleep
in, if I had a bed, and bed-clothes to put on it.
He even offered me the throne-room — a gigantic
affair about the size of the Pennsylvania Terminal
and containing three hassocks and a catafalque
like a half-finished sky-scraper. At night, when we
dined, an intrepid explorer who, we may suppose,
had reached the great doors after perils which had
turned him gray, would see, afar off across the
acres of dried and splitting parquetry flooring, a
table with one tiny electric light, round which
several humans were feasting. If his travels had
not bereft him of his senses, he might have gathered
that these extraordinary beings were continually
roaring with laughter at their own wit. Out of the
gloom at intervals would materialize a sinister
oriental figure bearing bottles whose contents he
poured out in libations before his humorous masters.

This frightful scene (near on midnight) was the
British Naval Residency at dinner. I ought to
have paid attention — only I was distracted by an
imaginary bowstring murder going on in the throne-
room beyond the vast folding doors — and then I
would have heard the details of the function taking
place below my hotel windows. But it is impossible
to pay attention to the details of a ceremonial while a

ii6 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

beautiful Circassian, on her knees between two
husky Ottoman slaves who are hauling at the cord
which has been passed in a clove-hitch about her
neck, is casting a last glance of despair upon the
ragged and cobwebbed scarlet silk portiere. It
may be objected that, as the tragedy was an im-
aginary one, I was not compelled to dwell upon it.
The reader and I will not quarrel over the point.
I will even make him a present of the fact that there
are no beautiful Circassians in that part of the
world. They have all been kidnapped and carried
away to the seraglios of our popular novelists, who
marry them, in the last chapter, to dashing young
college men of the "clean-cut" breed. But the
British Naval Resident's cook is an artist, and the
British Naval Resident's kiimmel, while it closes
the front doors of the mind to the trivial tattle of
conversation, draws up the dark curtain that hangs
at the back and reveals a vast and shadowy stage,
whereon are enacted the preposterous performances
of the souls of men.

II

But however hazy I might be myself about this
event, all Smyrna seemed cognizant. As I sat on
my balcony, I was joined by the children of the fam-
ily in the next room. Who the family in the next
room may be I am somewhat at a loss to explain.
At first I imagined they were a family of Russian re-

ON A BALCONY 117

fugees named Buttinsky; but Katia, the eldest, who
is ten and speaks French, says her father is a major
of artillery and is named Priam Callipoliton. From
occasional glances through the open door while
passing, one imagines that a married major in the
army of the Hellenes has a fierce time when he is at
home. There are three beds in the room, besides
a gas-stove and a perambulator. Leaning over my
balcony railing one early morning, and poking with
a walking-stick at an enigmatic crimson patch
on the Callipoliton window-sill, I discovered, to
my horror, that it was a raw liver, left out to keep
cool.

Priam seems to be fairly hard at it at the front.
Madame, a shapeless and indomitable creature,
regards me with that look of mysterious yet com-
fortable camaraderie which women with large families
seem to reserve for strange bachelors. I like her.
She uses my balcony (having none of her own)
with a frank disregard of the small change of etiquette
which is beyond praise. I come up from the street
in the middle of the morning and find Madame and
the femme de chamhre leaning comfortably on my
balcony-rail, a sisterly pair, each couple of high
French heels worn sideways, each broad-hipped
skirt gaping at the back, each with a stray hank
of hair waving wildly in the strong breeze blowing
across the glittering gulf. If I cough, they turn
and nod genially. If I explain apologetically that

1 1 8 HARBOURS OF MEMOR Y

I wish to change, they nod again and shut the big
jalousies upon me and my astounding modesty.

And if they are not there, the children are. Katia
is the possessor of three small sisters and a small
brother. They are Evanthe, Theodosia, and Sophia
with Praxiteles sifted in somewhere between them.
They were rather amazing at first. '' Etes-vous
marie?" they squeaked in their infantile Hellenic
trebles. "Pas encore" only made them point
melodramatic fingers at a photograph, with their
ridiculous black pigtails hanging over their shoulders.
^^Cest elle, feuUetre, Oui? Tres jolie!" And the
pigtails vibrated with vehement nods.

They use my balcony. Praxiteles has a horrifying
habit of sitting astride the rail. Katia takes the
most comfortable chair and asks me genially why
I do not go and make a promenade. '^ Avec voire
fiancee" she adds, with enervating audacity. And
I am supposed to have the exclusive use of this room,
with balcony, for three pounds (Turkish) per diem!

The point, however, is that, if this be the state
of affairs on ordinary days, on this particular morning
my balcony, Hke all the other balconies, is full.
Madame and the femme de- chambre are there. Katia,
Evanthe, Theodosia, Sophia, and Praxiteles are to
be heard of all men. Praxiteles endeavours to
drag an expensive pair of field-glasses from their
case, and is restrained only by main force. George,
the floor-porter, a sagacious but unsatisfactory

ON A BALCONY 119

creature, who plays a sort of Jekyll-and-Hyde
game with the femme de chamhre, comes in, on the
pretence of cleaning the electric light fittings, and
drifts casually to the balcony. George, descended
no doubt from the famous George family of Cap-
padocia, if rung for, goes away to find Marthe, the
femme de chamhre. Marthe appears, merely to go
away again to find George. It is a relief to see the
two of them at once, if only to dispel the dreadful
notion that George is Marthe and Marthe a sinister
manifestation of George.

It is a gratifying thing to record, too, that all
these people are perfectly willing that I should see
the show as well. Katia, commanded by Madame,
resigns the best chair, sulks a moment on one leg,
and then forgets her annoyance in the thunder of
the guns booming from the Greek warships in the
roadstead. I forge my way through and find a
stranger in the corner of my balcony.

For a moment I am in the grip of that elusive
yet impenetrable spirit of benevolent antipathy
which is the main cause of the Englishman's reputa-
tion for icy coldness toward those to whom he has
not been introduced. Now you can either break
ice or melt it ; but the best way is to let the real human
being, whom you can see through the cold blue
transparencies, thaw himself out, as he will in time.
Very few foreigners give us time. They jump on
the ice with both feet. They attempt to be breezy

I20 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

and English, and leave us aghast at their inconceiva-
ble fatuity. While we are struggling within our
deliquescent armour, and on the very point of escap-
ing into the warm sunlight of genial conversation,
they freeze us solid again with some frightful banal-
ity or racial solecism. The reader will perceive
from this that the Englishman is not having such
a pleasant time in the world as some people imagine.

However, the stranger on my balcony turns out
to be, not a foreigner, but another Englishman,
which is an even worse trial to some of us. He is, of
course, smoking a cigarette. He wears an old straw
hat, an old linen suit, and his boots are sHghtly
burst at the sides. His moustache and scanty hair
are iron gray. His eyes are pale blue. While he
talks they remain fixed upon CordeHo, which is on
the other side of the gulf. No doubt, if he were
talking in CordeHo, they would be fixed upon
Smyrna. He wears a plain gold wedding-ring. His
clothes are stylish, which is not to say they are new.
They might have been worn by a wealthy EngHsh-
man abroad, say nine or ten years ago. No Greek
tailor, for example, would hole all those buttons
on the cufFs, nor would he make the coat-collar
"lay" with such glovehke contiguity to the shoulders.
Also, the trousers hang as Greek trousers never hang,
in spite of their bagginess at the knees.

Keeping a watchful eye upon CordeHo, he bends
toward me as I sit in my chair, and apologizes for

ON A BALCONY 121

the intrusion. Somehow the phrase seems homelike,
Greeks, for example, never ** intrude": they come
in, generally bringing a powerful whiff of garlic
with them, and go out again, unregretted. They
do not admit an intrusion. Even my friend Kaspar
Dring, Stah-Oher-Leutnant attached to the defunct
Imperial German Consulate, would scarcely ap-
preciate the fine subtlety implied in apologizing
for an intrusion. It may be that so gay a personality
cannot conceive a psychological condition which his
undefeated optimism would fail to illuminate.
And so, when the stranger, who is, I imagine, on
the verge of forty, murmurs his apology for his in-
trusion, I postulate for him a past emerging from
the muzzy-minded ideals of the English middle class.
He adds that, in fact, he had made a mistake in
the number of the room. Quite thought this was
number seventy-seven, which was, I might know,
the official residence of the Bolivian vice-consul, a
great friend of his. Had arranged to see the affair
from the Bolivian vice-consul's balcony. However,
it didn't matter now, so long as I didn't mind —
What? Of course, I knew what was going on.
There! There he is, just stepping out of the launch.
That's Skaramapopulos shaking hands with him
now. English, eh? Just look at him! By Jove!
who can beat us, eh? And just look at that up-
holstered old pork-butcher, with his eighteen medals
and crosses, and never saw active service in his life.

122 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

Too busy making his percentage on — ^What? No,
not him — he's been asleep all his life. Oh, it was
a game! However, now he^s come, we may get
something like order into the country. Did I mind
if he took a few notes ?

I did not mind. I tipped a member of the Calli-
politon family off one of the other chairs, and begged
my new friend to sit down. I fetched my binoculars
and examined the scene below, where a famous
British general stood, with his tan-gloved hand at
the salute beside his formidable monocle, and was
introduced to the Greek general, the French admiral,
the Italian captain, and the British Heutenant.
"A cavalryman," I muttered, as he started off down
the line of Greek troops, hand at the salute, the sun
gleaming on his brown harness and shining spurs.
The Greek band was playing "See the Conquering
Hero Comes," very much off the key, and it almost
seemed as if the tune was too much for the conquer-
ing hero himself, for he dived suddenly into a motor-
car and moved rapidly away. Whereupon the
band took breath and began to form fours, the
yellowish green lines of troops coagulated into
oblong clots, the motor cars, with their little flags,
whooped and snarled at the crowds swarming,
from the cafes and side streets, and the quay began
to assume its wonted appearance (from above)
of a disorganized ant-heap.

And my balcony began also to thin out. The

ON A BALCONY 123

CallipoHton faction dwindled to Madame, who was
established on a chair at the other end, elbow on the
rail, contemplating Mount Sipylus like a disillusioned
sybil. Katia bounced back for a moment to inquire,
in a piercing treble, whether my baggage was ready,
and if so, should George descend with it to the
entrance hall?

I informed her that, if George was really bursting
to do something useful, he could go ahead and do
as she said.

She bounced away, and later the baggage was
found down below; but I am inclined to believe
that George sublet the contract to the Armenian
boots and merely took a rake-off. George is built
on those Hnes.

"So you are a reporter,'* I remarked to my friend,
eyeing the mangy-looking note book he was returning
to his pocket.

"Oh, yes," he assured me, adding hastily, though
I had made no comment, "Fm getting on very
well, too."

He didn't look it, but I let that pass. You can
never tell these miUionaires nowadays. I thought
I was safe in asking what paper he worked for.

"I've an article in to-day's Mercure de Smyrne,
You've seen it, I suppose?"

I hadn't. I'd never even heard of it. I had
read the Levant, the Independent, the Matin, the
Orient, and so forth; but the Mercure was a new one.

124 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

It came out of his pocket like a shot — a single
sheet with three columns on each side, three fourths
of the back occupied by an insurance company's ad.

**This is mine," he informed me, laying a finger
on a couple of paragraphs signed "Bijou/'

The article was entitled, '' Les Bas de Soie,''
and was in the boulevardese style dear to the Parisian
journalist.

"You write French easily.'^" I said, quite unable
to keep down my envy.

He waved his cigarette.

"Just the same as English," he assured me.
"Italian and Spanish also."

"Then for the love of Michael Angelo why do you
stop here in this part of the world? You might
make your thousands a year on a big paper as a
special commission. Why don't you go home.?"

Ill

Well, he told me why he didn't go home, though
not in so many words. If the reader will turn back
to the beginning, he will see some reflections upon
the behaviour of men under emotional shock and
stress. It is possible he may have already turned
back, wondering what those remarks portended,

what it was all about anyway. Well

It seems that Mr. Satterley Thwaiteson (I quote
his card, which he pressed upon me) had been in
the Levant some time. He had had a very pleasant

ON A BALCONY 125

probation as articled pupil to an architect in Nor-
wich— did I know it? — and had made quite a hobby
of studying French architecture, in his own time,
of course. Used to take his autumn vacation in
northern France, visiting the abbeys and ruins
and so forth. Got quite a facility, for an Enghsh-
man, in the language. Perhaps it was because
of this that, when he had been in a Bloomsbury
architect's office for a year or so, and a clerk of
works was needed for a Protestant church which
some society was erecting in Anatolia, he, Satterley
Thwaiteson, got the job. "Secured the appoint-
ment," were his exact words, but I imagine he meant,
really, that he got the job. He came out, on one
of the Pappayanni boats — did I know them.? —
and as far as I could gather, got his church up with-
out any part of it falling down before the consecra-
tion service. Which, considering the Levantine
contractor's conceptions of probity, was a wonder.
So far Mr. Satterley Thwaiteson's history seemed
simple enough. Like many others of his imperial
race, he had gone abroad and had added to the pres-
tige of the English name by erecting a Protestant
church in a country where Protestants are as plenti-
ful as pineapples in Labrador. But — and here
seems to be the joint in the stick — he didn't go
home. All the time regarding Cordelio across the
gulf with his pale-blue eyes, an expression of extra-
ordinary pride and pleasure comes over his features,

126 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

and banishes for a few moments the more permanent
indication of a man who had lost the art of life.
Extraordinary pride and pleasure! He didn't go
home. Never did go home. It is obvious that
the memory of this emotional treachery to the call
of home is something to be treasured as one of
the great things in life. No, on the contrary, he got
married out here. Yes, a foreigner, too — a Rouman-
ian. And they didn't get married in his wonderful
Protestant church either, for she was a Roman Catho-
lic. ** Here's a photo of her as she was then."

He takes from his pocket an old wallet stuffed
with folded letters, and fishes out a small flat oval
frame that opens on a hinge. There are two por-
traits, photos coloured Hke miniatures. One is
the Mr. Satterley Thwaiteson of that day fifteen
or sixteen years ago, not so different save as to the
hair, of which there is not much at present. But the
woman is beautiful. In these days of high-tension
fiction, when novelists, like the Greek in one of
Aristophanes's plays, walk about, each with his
string of lovely female slaves, it is tame enough
to say a woman is beautiful. And perhaps it would
be better to say that this woman in the little coloured
photo was startHng. The bronze hair piled high,
the broad fair brow, the square indomitable chin,
the pallor contrasting with the heavily lashed brown
eyes, the exquisite lips, all formed a combination
which must have had a rather curious effect upon

ON A BALCONY 127

the studious young man from Norwich via Blooms-
bury. Filled him with pride for one thing, or he
wouldn't be showing this picture to a stranger.

But what struck me about that girl's picture,
even before he fished out a picture postcard photo
of his family taken a month or two ago, was some-
thing in her face which can be expressed only by
the word rapacity. Not, be it noted, a vampire.
If the truth were known, there are very few vam-
pires about, outside of high-tension fiction. But I
saw rapacity, and it seemed a curious thing to find
in a woman who, it transpired, had married him
and borne him children, eight in all, and had made
him so happy that he had never gone home.

For that was what had aged him and paralyzed
him and kept him there until he was a shabby
failure — happiness. That was what brought to
his face that expression of extraordinary pride and
pleasure. As I Hstened to his tale I wondered, and
at the back of my mind, on the big shadowy stage
of which I spoke, there seemed to be something
going on which he forgot to mention. And when
he showed me, with tender pride, the picture-
postcard photo of his wife and her eight children,
I could not get rid of the notion that there was some-
thing rapacious about her. Even now she was hand-
some, in a stout and domineering kind of way. It
was absurd to accuse such a woman of rapacity.
Was she not a pearl? Everything a woman should

128 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

do, she had done. She had been fruitful, she had
been a good mother, a virtuous wife, and her hus-
band assumed an expression of extraordinary pride
and pleasure when he showed a stranger her portrait.
His happiness in her was so rounded and complete
that he would never have another thought away
from her. He would never go to England again.
Was not this marvellous.^

As I pondered upon the marvel of it, I heard him
telling me how he had found some difficulty in
making a living out of the few architectural com-
missions which happened along, and gradually
fell into the habit of giving lessons in English to
Greeks and Armenians who were anxious to achieve
social distinction. And when the war came, and he
was shut up with everybody else in the city, he had
to depend entirely upon the language lessons. And
then, of course, he "wrote for the press" as well,
as he had shown me. He was very successful,
he thought, taking everything into consideration.
Why, he would get three pounds Turkish (about
four dollars) for that little thing. Always signed
himself "Bijou.'" His wife Hked it. It was her
name for him when they were lovers. And though,
of course, the teaching was hard work, for Armenian
girls were inconceivably thick-headed, and some-
times it occupied him twelve or fourteen hours a
day, yet it paid and he was happy.

And in the very middle of my irritation at him

ON A BALCONY 129

for harping on what he called happiness, I saw that
I was right, after all: that girl had been rapacious.
She had devoured his personality, fed on it, destroyed
it, and had grown stout and virtuous upon it. His
hair was thin and gray, he had a hunted and dilapi-
dated look, and his boots were slightly burst at the
sides. And he was happy. He had abandoned
his profession, and he toiled Hke a packhorse for the
bare necessities; yet he was happy. He was proud.
It was plain he believed his position among men
was to be gauged by his having won his peerless
woman. He rambled on about local animosities
and politics, and it was forced upon me that he
would not do for a great newspaper. He would
have to go away and find out how the people of
the world thought and felt about things, and I was
sure he would never consent to do that. His wife
would not like it. And he might not be happy.

It is evening, and the sun, setting behind Cordelio
shines straight through my room and along the
great dusty corridor beyond. In the distance can
be seen those antiphonal personalities, Marthe
and George, in harmony at last, waiting to waylay
me for a tip. On the balcony is the mother of all
the Callipolitons, elbow on the rail, contemplating
Mount Sipylus like some shrewd sybil who has
found out the worthlessness of most of the secrets
of the gods.

I30 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

When I have packed an attache case, I am ready.
The destroyer on which I am to travel to Constan-
tinople is signalling the flagship. In an hour she
will depart. I go out once more on the balcony,
to contemplate for the last time the familiar scene.
The roadstead sparkles in the sun and the distant
waters are aflame. The immense heave of the
mountain-ranges is purple and ruddy gold, and in
the distance I can see white houses in quiet valleys
above the gray-green of the olive grounds. There
is one in particular, among great cypresses, and I
turn the binoculars upon it for a brief sentimental
moment. As I return the glasses to the case, Ma-
dame regards me with attention.

** Vous partez ce soir, monsieur? " she murmurs.

And I nod, wondering why one can detect nothing
of rapacity in her rather tired face. **Oui, madame^
je pars pour Constantinople ce soir," I assure
her, thinking to engage her in conversation.

So far, in spite of our propinquity and the vocifer-
ous curiosity of Kataia, we have not spoken together
to any extent.

''Etapres?''

"Apres, madame, je vais a Make, Marseille, Paris,
£t Londres, Peut-etre, a VAmerique aussi — je ne
jais pas."

'*Mon Dieu!" She seems quietly shocked at the
levity of a man who prances about the world like
this. Then comes the inevitable query: ''Vous

ON A BALCONY 131

hes marie ^ monsieur? ^^ and the inevitable reply,
'*Pas encore. '^

She abandons Mount Sipylus for a while and turns
on the chair, one high-heeled and rather slatternly
shoe tapping on the marble flags. ^^ Mais dites moiy
monsieur; vous avez une amante de coeur, sans doute?"

*' Fous croyez ga? Pourquoi?"

She shrugs her shoulders.

^*N'importe. C'est vrai. Vous etes triste."

'*Oui. Mais c*est la guerre ^

She was silent a moment, observing later that I
was a philosopher, which was flattering but irrele-
vant. And then she said something that I carried
away with me, as the destroyer fled over the dark
waters of the iEgean.

''Oui, c^est la guerre, mais il faut que vous n'ou-
bliez, monsieur, que chaque voyage est un petit mort.'*

I left her there, looking out across the hard blue
glitter of the gulf, when I went down to go aboard.

THE SHINING HOUR

The destroyer, driven by her three powerful turbines,
moves forward in a series of long vibrant lunges. As
she careens in each of her rhythmical pauses, there
mingles with the interminable hum of her revolving
motors the complaining sough and hiss of the white
spume flying from her high-flaring forecastle, and
overflowing with a dazzling commotion the opaque
blue of the heaving sea. Far forward, in the shadows
beneath that same forecastle, screened from light and
weather, and the flat white tops of their saucy caps
catching the pale glow of a dirty electric globe, sit
several bluejackets, the blue-gray smoke of their
cigarettes vanishing like strips of impalpable gauze
overside. On the bridge a solitary gleaming figure in
oilskins and peaked hat maintains itself in equilib-
rium with the intelligent precision of a motionless
pendulum. Nearer, the torpedoes in the sinister
hooded tubes strain slightly at their lashings between
the huge squat cowls, with their wired orifices, which
lead to the forced-draft fans of the bright, clean,
silent stokeholds. The three short and flattened
funnels are raked, so that, viewed from astern they
have an air of haughty and indomitable endurance,

132

THE SHINING HOUR 133

like that of a man driving a team at furious speed
and leaning back in derision. And from their
throats pour torrents of hot gases visible only by
the tremulous agitation of the atmosphere to leeward.
At intervals, as the slim ovalled stem rises higher
than usual, the sunHght glints on the bronze hand-
wheels of the after gun and gives a deHcate sheen to
the green-painted depth-charges in their cradles by
the rail. And there is an ominous roar from the
white effervescence below, a roar which dies away
immediately the stern subsides, and one can see
again the emerald and jade and cream of the wake
stretching like a floating ribbon to the limits of
vision.

And as we proceed, to use a naval euphemism for
any adjustment of position, whether carried out at
one knot or one hundred, the scene through which we
are passing changes with the fabulous disregard of
rational probabilities which is experienced in dreams.
The islands of the ^gean seem to be playing, as in
mythological times, some ponderous and mysterious
game. They come and go. They execute protean
transformations of outline and chameleon changes of
lustre and hue. As we speed westward the sun
behind Olympos seems, like King Charles, an un-
conscionable time dying: and then, as the course is
changed to the northeastward he drops with dis-
concerting suddenness and a polychromatic splash
into a transfigured ocean. And a staid and re-

134 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

spectable cargo-boat, doing her twelve knots per-
haps, heaves into clear view, slides past, and vanishes
with the indecent haste of a funeral reproduced on
the cinematograph.

Such is life at thirty-five knots.

On such an occasion, too, as has been described, a
benevolent and keen-eyed aviator, had he been
passing overhead, might have seen, huddled upon
the after deck of the destroyer, a figure in naval uni-
form with his oilskins up to his ears, keeping a
watchful eye upon a khaki-colored sea-bag and a
couple of battered suitcases which threatened at
every swing to come adrift and slide over the smooth
linoleum-covered deck into the sea. And being
familiar with that part of the world and the naval
habits pertaining thereto, this aviator would have
surmised that the figure would be, very likely, a
Lieutenant of Reserve on his way home, who had
been granted a passage on a destroyer to enable him
to join another warship which would consent to take
him to Malta.

And his surmise would have been perfectly correct.

But what this benevolent aviator would not have
divined as he swept over and on, and ultimately
picked up his next landmark, which was Mount
Athos, would be that the Lieutenant of Reserve
had made a vow to write an article before he got
home, and that he was feeling depressed at the ex-
treme unlikelihood of his ever doing so if his transit

THE SHINING HOUR 135'

was to be conducted seated on a bronze scuttle and
holding on to his worldly possessions as they slipped
and swayed.

Another thing the aviator would never have
guessed was that this Lieutenant of Reserve, addicted
as he was to hterature, had never been able to take it
seriously. It was almost as if he and literature had
had a most fascinating intrigue for a good many
years yet he had always refused to marry her! He
had never been able to settle down day after day to a
hum-drum, ding-dong battle with a manuscript,
every week seeing another batch finished and off to
the printers: a steady, working journeyman of let-
ters. He had heard of such people. He had read
interviews with eminent votaries of this sort of thing
and had taken their statements (uttered without the
flicker of an eyelash) with a grain of salt. He had
always been ready with a perfectly vahd reason
which excused his own failure to do such things. He
was a Lieutenant of Reserve and it was impossible,
with the daily duties and grave responsibiHties of
such a position, to concentrate upon anything else.

All nonsense, of course, as any one who has seen a
Lieutenant of Reserve at work could tell you. Be-
sides, it is well known that men at the front wrote
poems "under fire,*' that army officers sat amid shot
and shell and calmly dictated best sellers. It is
equally well known that, with practice, any naval
officer of average intelligence can be educated to fire

136 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

a fifteen-inch gun with one hand and write a villanelle
with the other. As for aviators, they may be said
not only to "Hsp in numbers" as was said of Pope,
but they take as many flights of fancy as they do
over the Hnes. So there is no real reason for a mere
Lieutenant of Reserve failing to turn out a mo-
notonously regular ten thousand words a day, let us
say, except his own laziness and incapacity. And
this particular Lieutenant of Reserve felt this in his
heart; and so, as soon as the cares of office fell from
his shoulders he vowed a vow that each day he would
do a regular whack at this proposed article, that
each day he would improve the shining hour.

Moreover, and above all, there was the great
example of Anthony Trollope. Possibly the reader
has heard of that eminent best seller of a past age,
whom nothing could dismay. For Trollope's chief
claim to the pop-eyed reverence of posterity seems to
be that he reduced writing to the methodical precision
of a carpenter planing a board. His slogan was not
"art for art's sake," or "quality not quantity," or
anything like that at all. It was not even that
ancient piece of twaddle, ^^ nulla dies sine linea.'* It
was: "a page every quarter of an hour." For years
the Lieutenant of Reserve had been haunted by the
picture evoked by that simple phrase — the picture of
a big beefy person with mutton-chop whiskers and a
quill pen, sitting squarely at a table with a clock
before him; and four times every hour would be

THE SHINING HOUR 137

heard the hiss of a sheet torn off and flung aside and a
fresh one begun. It is no good arguing that they
didn't use writing blocks in those days. A man
who worked his brain by the clock would no doubt
invent a tear-off pad for his own use. I have seen
him, in nightmares, and heard the hiss. And noth-
ing could stop him. At sea he was just the same.
The ship might roll, the waves run mountains high,
sailors get themselves washed off and drowned,
engines break down, boiler-furnaces collapse and
propeller-shafts carry away — nimporte. Wedged
into his seat in the cabin Trollope drove steadily on.
Every fifteen minutes, click! another page finished.
If a chapter happened to be completed, half way
down a page, he did not stop. On! on! not even
when a novel was finished did he waste any time. He
took a fresh sheet of paper perhaps (with a steady
glance at the clock) and went right on at the next one.
There was something heroic about this, one feels,
but there is an uneasy feeling at the back of one's
mind that the man had mistaken his vocation. Why
did he do it? Had he a frightful vision of a pubHc at
its last gasp for lack of nourishing fiction, and so
toiled on with undiminished ardour, hour after hour,
day after day? Had he committed some dark and
desperate crime, and so was seeking to do penance
by thus immolating himself upon the altar of un-
remitting labour ? Otherwise, why did he do it ? For
the theory that he Hked doing it or that it was a

138 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

perfectly natural thing for an author to do, is un-
tenable. There is a story that he did not believe
very much in inspiration, or rather that he did not
believe in waiting for it; and one is bound to admit
that his novels seem to prove it. But if a man does
not believe in waiting for inspiration, what is his
idea in writing at all .? It is like a man saying that he
does not believe in waiting for love, that one woman
is very much like another as far as he is concerned,
that those who express finical preferences are not
serious citizens concerned only with keeping up the
birthrate. ...

Nevertheless it must be admitted that the Trol-
lopian tradition has its fascinations for those who,
having some turn for writing, are preoccupied more
with the fact of achievement than the fun of the
thing. The great point, they feel, is to get it done
(and paid for). They compose direct on to a type-
writer, it is rumoured, and even employ a secretary to
take it down. And when the shift is over, one sup-
poses they go away and play golf. No doubt in
time the secretary is able to cope with the work un-
aided. It is difficult to see why not.

To the Lieutenant of Reserve, however, these
considerations were not of much importance. This
humdrum method of intensive quantity-production
might destroy the soul if persisted in for years. He
had no such intention. He merely wished to see
whether it could be carried on for a short while.

THE SHINING HOUR 139

And when he and his baggage were tumbled off the
destroyer into a picket-boat and carried aboard of a
sloop-of-war bound for Malta, he began to nerve
himself for the trial. The time had come, he felt,
to improve the shining hour.

For of course, with that curious self-deception
that seems to give an air of unreality to everything
an author says to himself, he was quite sure he knew
what it was he had to write. Quite sure. It was
to be an article of, say three or four thousand words.
There was to be no nonsense about "getting stuck"
in the middle of it, or changing it into something else
and making it longer. He would write it in his
bunk, pad propped up on knee, for there is always
too much noise in these ward-rooms with the gramo-
phone in one corner, the paymaster's typewriter
going in another, and half a dozen men playing
cards in between. And smiling a little, he requested
a mess-rating to show him his cabin.

A sloop, the uninitiated may be informed, is not a
vessel primarily designed to encourage the pro-
duction of literature. She is, on the contrary, a
slender, two-funnelled, wasp-waisted affair of un-
deniable usefulness during what were known as
"hostilities." She is subdivided into minute spaces
by steel bulkheads with dished and battened rubber-
ijointed doors. The ordinary pathways of humanity
are encumbered by innumerable wheels, plugs,
pipes, wires, extension rods, and screwed down

140 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

hatchways. And when it became necessary to send
home Lieutenants of Reserve and many other ranks
and ratings, so that a grateful country might pay
them off and leave them to shift for themselves, the
Navy found it increasingly difficult to find passages
for them, and decided to go into the passenger
business itself. And the world having been made
perfectly safe for democracy, it was felt that any-
thing savouring of comfort would be out of place
in their ships. The stern, iron-bound and rock-
ribbed veterans who were coming home would
scorn the soft delights of a wire mattress or shaving
glass. These ammunition-chambers, for example,
are the very thing. Fix 'em up. And in a few
hours four bunks would be fitted up in a space about
the size of an ordinary office strong room. There is
neither light nor ventilation; but no matter. Give
'em a couple of electrics. They're only here for a
few days anyhow.

And here we are ! There are three other Lieuten-
ants of Reserve in the other three bunks and the
conversation is general. The gentleman below me,
who is smoking strong Turkish cigarettes, has just
come down from the Black Sea where he has been
employed resuscitating a temporarily defunct Rus-
sian cruiser. Some job, he avers. The Russians
may be great idealists and artists; they may even
have a knack at the ballet and show us a thing or two
about novel-writing, but they are out of their ele-

THE SHINING HOUR 141

ment as sailormen. You cannot navigate a ship
with the wild, free movement of the figures in a
Bakst design. You must cultivate a different at-
titude toward material forces in an engine room that
is adumbrated in modern Russian fiction. This is
corroborated by Mr. Top-Bunk on the other side.
Fine job they'd given him, a respectable engineer.
Did we know Novorossisk at all ? Yes, we chimed,
we'd loaded grain there in the old days. Up the
River Bug, wasn't it? Yep. Well, a place not so
far up, Ekaterin-something. They'd mussed up the
electric-power plant. We had to get it going again.
To begin with, these idealists, these makers of a new
and happier world, had let the boilers go short of
water, had brought down the furnace-crowns and
started a good many stays. Also they had cut a good
deal of indispensable copper away from the switch-
board and, presumably, sold it. Or perhaps they
were merely putting their theories into practice and
dividing up the plant among the community. How-
ever, it didn't signify, because while we were making
up our plans, on the boat, and trying to figure out
how much of the original wreckage would come in
again, one of the local enthusiasts felt he couldn't
wait any longer for the Millennium and flung an
armful of hand grenades through the shattered win-
dows of the power house. We could imagine what
happened among those dynamos and turbine cases.
Mr. Lower-Bunk on the other side doesn't say

142 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

much except that he'd been mine-sweeping. He
says very Httle all the way to Malta. Sweepers
very rarely have much to say. They have a habit
of quiet reticence, engendered by the curious Hfe
they lead, a hfe balanced on the very knife-edge of
disaster. They generally get gray over the ears and
their movements are deliberate and cautious, after
the manner of men who dwell in the presence of high
explosives. It occurs to me suddenly that these
men are all about to vanish, to disappear from
pubHc view, and we shall have no record of their
spiritual adventures during the last few years. In a
month or so at most they will have doffed their naval
uniforms and (much to their rehef) put on civihan
garb once more. I say we shall have no record of
their spiritual adventures. We have tales of their
doings as heroes, no doubt; but that is not the same
thing. I suppose, if the truth be told, a good many
of them had no adventures of this description. A
surgeon with whom I sailed, a dry satirical person of
exceptional mental powers, once enunciated to me a
particularly brutal theory to account for this gap in
our literature. Just as, he asserted, just as below a
certain stage in the animal kingdom the nervous
system becomes so rudimentary and mechanical
that pain as we know it is non-existent, so, below
a certain social level in civilized life the emotions are
largely an instinctive response to unconscious stimuU
appHed to actual cases.

THE SHINING HOUR 143

This mine-sweeping Lieutenant of Reserve for
example, who Hves in a diminutive brick subdivision
of a long edifice in a long road a long way out of
Cardiff, and who enjoys having his tea in the kitchen
with his coat off and the cat on his knee, according
to my surgical friend, is unable to comprehend within
himself the emotions inspired by the fine arts, by great
literature, or by great beauty. Now this seemed to
me unfair, and I adduced as an argument the fact
that these people often appreciated fine literature.
Nothing could have been more unfortunate! I had
delivered myself into his hands. He simply asked
me how I knew. By what method of calibration
were we to gauge the ability of these people to
appreciate anything of the sort.^ Did I ever hear
these people talking about books, or art, or beauty .f* I
was silent, and he went on as though he enjoyed it.
Reading, he informed me, was no evidence whatever.
Reading the written characters in a printed book
implied no comprehension of the moods inspiring the
book. Universal education had taught these people
to go through the various external mental processes
and no doubt the words did convey some rough-and-
ready meaning to their minds, just as a monkey who
has been taught to ride a bicycle had some sort of
crude conception of momentum and equilibrium.
But as for actually entering into the full intention of
the artist, why, look at the books they generally
read, look at the pictures they preferred, look (and

144 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

here I got up and walked away) at the women they
married !

I mention this surgeon because I met him again
in Malta. After four days of ceaseless and intoler-
able rolling, pitching, and shaking, during which
I calculated, Trollope would have written a novel
and a half, but which added not a word to my article,
we raised Malta, and passing under the great guns
of the fortifications, anchored in the Grand Harbour
of Valletta. And I met him in the Strada Reale.
Sooner or later one meets every man one has ever
sailed with in the Strada Reale. The paymaster
who was so rude to you about an advance of pay
in Scapa Flow, the airman who cleaned you out at
poker at Saloniki, the engineer who tried to borrow
from you in Bizerta, the senior naval officer who
refused you leave in Suez — yon will encounter them
all sooner or later in the Strada Reale. And after
I had deposited my baggage in one of the vaulted
chambers which pass for bedrooms within the enor-
mous walls of the Angleterre, on the Strada St.
Lucia, we adjourned to the great square in front of
the Libreria and sat at a little table.

And the thought that comes to me as we sit at
the little table — just out of the stream of cheerful
people who pour up and down the Strada Reale and
seem to have no other occupation, and in the shadow
of the great honey-coloured walls of the Governor's
Palace — is that the Surgeon will not only prevent

THE SHINING HOUR 145

my getting on with my article but will probably
adduce half a dozen excellent reasons why it should
not be written. He has a thin chilly smile which
is amusing enough in the ward room but which acts
like a bUght upon one's inspiration. He is not
satisfied with proving that everything has been done.
He goes on to show conclusively that it wasn't
worth doing, anyway. The tender shoots of fancy,
the delicate flowers of thought, perish in the icy wind
of his mentality. The fact is, it is not necessary
for him to confess that he has never written a Hne,
couldn't write a line, and never intends to write a
line. It sticks out all over. He lacks that naivete,
that soft spot in his brain, that shy simpHcity, which
brackets the artist with the tramp, the child, and
the village idiot. He is "all there" as we say, and
one must not be afraid to confess that an artist is
very rarely "all there." I do not offer this expla-
nation to him, of course. His enjoyment of it would
be too offensive. And when I tell him of my mis-
givings about Trollope, the smile irradiates his thin
intellectual features. He fails to see why a man
shouldn't work at writing precisely the same as he
works at anything else. "If he's to get anything
done," he adds.

"But don't you see," I argue weakly, "the artist
isn't particularly keen on getting a thing done,
as you call it? He gets his pleasure out of doing
it, playing with it, fooling with it, if you like. The

146 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

mere completion of it is an incident. Can't you
see r

But he couldn't. These efficient people never
can see a thing like that. They mutter "amateur,"
and light a fresh cigar. They are like first-class
passengers on a liner — bright, well-dressed, well-
mannered, and accomplished people, being carried,
they know not how, across a dark and mysterious
world of heaving waters. They can explain every-
thing without knowing much about anything. They
are the idle rich of the intellectual world. They

**What did you say was the title of that article
you were going to write?" asked the Surgeon.

"Well," I said slowly, "I was going to call it
'The Shining Hour,' but I don't know if after
all. ... "

"Well, why don't you get on with it then?" he
inquired, and he snickered. "It sounds all right,"
he added, and finished his Italian vermouth. "Have
another. It may give you an idea!"

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS

The cruiser, coming to anchor with a sudden rattle
of cable and grind of rapidly revolving wheels, found
us ready to disembark. Leaving our baggage in
heaps upon scuttles and gratings, we poured down
the gangway and tumbled into the competing
dinghies which swarmed about us. In this evolution
there was to be observed no trace of the traditional
eagerness of sentimental travellers to meet the first
authentic impact of a place. The formularies of
clearing from the ship's mess, the disentanglement
of baggage, and the mollification of ward-room ratings
had engrossed our faculties during arrival. Even
as the boat approached the high flat platform of the
Customs Quay, and the immediate noises and odours
of the Harbour Side assailed us, we remained pre-
occupied with the exigencies of our naval obligations.
We saw, that is to say, nothing. We moved hur-
idedly across the Quay, climbed into diminutive
carriages and were driven, with much cracking of
whips and display of Latin temperament, up into the
town, like so many prisoners. . . .

H7

148 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

And he came out of the Strada Mezzodi running,
shoulders back, gloves and cane held bosom-high
in his clenched fists, like an athlete's corks, the whole
body of the man pulsing and glowing from the ascent
of that precipitous slot. Came out into the Strada
Reale and brought up against me with a squashing
thump that left us limp and uncertain of the future.

He took off his cap and mopped his swiftly sloping
forehead with the heel of his hand, an original and
unforgettable gesture. There he was, unchanged
and unchangeable, a knotty sliver of England,
exactly the same, save for the Naval Reserve Uni-
iorm, as when, some nine years before, I had seen
him barging his way into the shipping office in North
Shields to sign off articles, for he was going away
home to Newcastle to get married. There he was,
ready-witted as ever, for he demanded with incredi-
ble rapidity of utterance what the hell I thought I was
doing, and recognized me even as he asked. He was,
for all his doe-skin uniform and characteristically
shabby lace and gloves, the same scornful, black
browed, hook-nosed truculent personality. Small,
yet filling the picture like bigger men by reason of
his plunging restlessness, his disconcerting circum-
locution of body, he vibrated before me even now an
incarnate figure of interrogation. He found breath
and voice, and shook my hand in a limp lifeless fash-
ion that conveyed an uncanny impression of it being
his first timorous experiment in handshaking — an-

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 149

other peculiar and paradoxical by-product of his
personality. He turned me round and propelled
me back along the Strada Reale. He said the man
I wanted to see at the Base Office was away playing
polo and I could see him in the morning. He asked
where my baggage was, and when I told him he said
the Regina was the worst hotel in town and there was
a room vacant next to his in the Angleterre. He
turned me suddenly into the entrance hall of a vast
structure of stone where in the cool darkness dimin-
ished humans sat in tiny chairs and read the news-
telegrams at microscopic notice-boards. An ornate
inscription informed me that this place had been the
Auberge of the Knights of the Tongue of Provence,
but he said it was the Union Club. He examined
a row of pigeon-holes and took out some letters.
We sallied forth into the afternoon sunlight again
and he hurried me along toward the Piazza de
San Giorgio. A captain and two commanders passed
and I saluted, but my companion spun round a
corner into the declivity called the Strada San
Lucia, and muttered that his salutes were all over
and done with. Scandalized, yet suspecting in my
unregenerate heart that here lay a tale that might
be told in the twilight, I made no reply. Another
turn into the fitly-named Strada Stretta, no more
than a congregation of stone staircases largely
monopolized by children, and goats with colossal
udders and jingling bells, and we hurtled into the

I50 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

archway of an enormous mediaeval building whose
iron gate shut upon us with a clang like a new-oiled
postern.

And as we ascended the winding stone stairs there
came down to us a medley of persons and impressions.
There were far gongs and musical cries pierced with a
thin continuous whine. There was a piratical crea-
ture with fierce eyes and an alarming shock of up-
standing black hair, who wielded a mop and stared
with voracious curiosity. There came bounding
down upon us a boy of eleven or so, with brown hair,
a freckled nose, and beautiful gray eyes. There
descended a buxom woman of thirty, modest and
capable to the eye, yet with a sort of tarnish of sor-
rowful experience in her demeanour. And behind
her, walking abreast and in step, three astounding ap-
paritions, Russian guardsmen, in complete regalia,
blue and purple and bright gold so fabulous that one
stumbled and grew afraid. Mincingly they de-
scended, in step, their close-shaven polls glistening,
their small eyes and thin, long legs giving them the
air of something dreamed, bizarre adumbrations of an
order gone down in ruin and secret butchery to a
strangled silence.

A high, deep, narrow gothic doorway on a landing
stood open and we edged through.

I had many questions to ask. I was reasonably
entitled to know, for example, the charges for these
baronial halls and gigantic refectories. I had a legi-

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 151

timate curiosity concerning the superb beings who
dwelt, no doubt, in mediaeval throne-rooms in dis-
tant wings of the chateau. And above all I was
wishful to learn the recent history of Mr. Eustace
Heatly, sometime second engineer of the old S. S.
Dolores, late engineer-lieutenant, and now before my
eyes tearing off his coat and vest and pants, and
bent double over a long black coffin-like steel chest
whence he drew a suit of undeniable tweeds. But
it was only when he had aboHshed the last remaining
trace of naval garniture by substituting a cerise pop-
lin cravat for the black affair worn in memory of the
late Lord Nelson, and a pair of brown brogues for the
puritanical mess boots of recent years, that Heatly
turned to where I sat on the bed and looked search-
ingly at me from under his high-arched, semicircular
black eyebrows.

He was extraordinarily unlike a naval officer now.
Indeed, he was unHke the accepted Enghshman.
He had one of those perplexing personalities which
are as indigenous to England as the Pennine Range
and the Yorkshire Wolds, as authentic as Stone-
henge; yet by virtue of their very perplexity have a
difficulty in getting into literature. There was
nothing of the tall blond silent Englishman about
this man at all. Yet there was probably no mingling
of foreign blood in him since Phoenician times —
he was entirely and utterly English. He can be
found in no other land and yet is to be found in all

152 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

lands, generally with a concession from the govern-
ment and a turbulent band of assistants. His
sloping simian forehead was growing bald, and it
gleamed as he came over to where I sat. His jaws,
blue from the razor creased as he drew back his chin
and began his inevitable movement of the shoulders
which preluded speech. He was English, and he
was on the point of proving his racial affinity be-
yond all cavil.

*^But why get yourself demobilized out here?" I
demanded, when he had explained. **Is there a job
to be had?"

"Job!" he echoed, eyebrows raised as he looked
over his shoulder with apparent animosity. "Job!
There s z fortune out here! See this?" He dived
over the bed to where lay his uniform and extracted
from the breast-pocket a folded sheet of gray paper.
Inside was a large roughly pencilled tracing of the
eastern Mediterranean. There was practically no
nomenclature. An empty Italy kicked at an equally
vacuous Sicily. Red blobs marked ports. The
seas were spattered with figures, as in a chart, mark-
ing soundings. And laid out in straggling lines like
radiating constellations, were green and yellow and
violet crosses. From Genoa to Marseilles, from
Marseilles to Oran, from Port Said and Alexandria
to Cape Bon, from Saloniki to Taranto, these poly-
chromatic clusters looped and clotted in the sea-lanes,
until the eye, roving at last toward the intricate con-

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 153

figuration of the Cyclades, caught sight of the Sea of
Marmora, where the green symbols formed a closely
woven texture.

"Where did you get this?" I asked, amazed,
and Heatly smoothed the crackling paper as it lay
between us on the bed. His shoulders worked and
his chin drew back, as though he were about to spring
upon me.

"That's telling," he grunted. "The point is: do
you want to come in on this? These green ones
y'understand, are soft things, in less'n ten fathom.
The yellows are deeper. The others are too big or
too deep for us."

"Who's us?" I asked, beginning to feel an interest
beyond his own personality. He began to fold up
the chart, which had no doubt come by unfrequented
ways from official dossiers,

"There's the Skipper and the Mate and meself,"
he informed me, "but we can do with another en-
gineer. Come in with us!" he ejaculated "It's
the chance of a Hfetime. You put up five hundred,
and it's share and share alike."

I had to explain, of course, that what he suggested
was quite impossible. I was not demobilized. I
had to join a ship in dock-yard hands. Moreover,
I had no five hundred to put up. He did not press
the point. It seemed to me that he had simply been
the temporary vehicle of an obscure wave of senti-
ment. We had been shipmates in the old days. He

154 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

had never been a friend of mine, it must be under-
stood. We had wrangled and snarled at each other
over hot and dirty work, we had gone our separate
ways ashore, and he had rushed from the shipping
office that day in Shields and never even said good-
bye ere he caught the train to Newcastle and matri-
mony. Yet here now, after nine years, he abruptly
offered me a fortune! The slow inexorable passage
of time had worn away the ephemeral scoria of our
relations and laid bare an unexpected vein of durable
esteem. Even now, as I say, he did not press the
point. He was loth to admit any emotion beyond a
gruff solicitude for my financial aggrandisement.
And while we were bickering amiably on these lines
the high narrow door opened and the buxom woman
appeared with a tea-tray. She smiled and went over
to the embrasured window where there stood a table.
As she stood there, in her neat black dress and white
apron, her dark hair drawn in smooth convolutions
about her placid brows, her eyes declined upon the
apparatus on the tray, she had the air of demure so-
phistication and sainted worldliness to be found in
lady prioresses and mother superiors when dealing
with secular aliens. She was an intriguing anomaly
in this stronghold of ancient and militant celibates.
The glamour of her individual illusion survived even
the introduction that followed.

**This is Emma," said Heatly as though indicating
a natural but amusing feature of the landscape.

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 155

"Emma, an old shipmate o' mine. Let him have
that room next to this. Anybody been ? "

"Yes," said Emma in a soft, gentle voice. "Cap-
tain Gosnell rang up. He wants to see you at the
usual place."

"Then rU be going," said Heatly, drinking tea
standing, a trick abhorred to those who regard teas
as something of a ritual. "Lay for four at our
table to-night and send to the Regina for my friend's
gear. And mind, no games!" And he placed his
arm about her waist. Seizing a rakish-looking deer-
stalker, he made for the door and then halted
abruptly, looking back upon us with apparent ma-
levolence. Emma smiled without resigning her pose
of sorrowful experience, and the late engineer-
lieutenant slipped through the door and was gone.

So there were to be no games. I looked at Emma
and stepped over to help myself to tea. There
were to be no games. Comely as she was, there was
no more likelihood of selecting the cloistral Emma for
trivial gallantry than of puUing the Admiral's nose.
I had other designs on Emma. I had noted the
relations of those two with attention and it was
patent to me that Emma would tell me a good deal
more about Heatly than Heatly knew about himself.
Heatly was that sort of man. He would be a prob-
lem of enigmatic opacity to men, and a crystal-clear
solution to the cool, disillusioned matron.

And Emma told. Women are not only implacable

IS6 HARBOURS OF MEMORY ^

realists, they are unconscious artists. They dwell
always in the Palace of Unpalatable Truth and never
by any chance is there a magic talisman to save
them from their destiny. Speech is their ultimate
need. We exist for them only in so far as we can be
described. As the incarnate travesties of a mysti-
cal ideal we inspire ecstasies of romantic supposition.
There is a rapt expression on the features of a woman
telHng about a man. Duty and pleasure melt into
one suffusing emotion and earth holds for her no
holier achievement.

And so, as the reader is ready enough to believe,
there were no games. Apart from her common ur-
bane humanity, Emma's lot in life, as the deserted
wife of a Highland sergeant lacking in emotional
stability, had endowed her with the smooth effi-
ciency of a character in a novel. She credited me
with a complete inventory of normal virtues and
experiences and proceeded to increase my knowledge
of life.

And the point of her story, as I gathered, was this.
My friend Heatly, in the course of the years, had
completed the cycle of existence without in any de-
gree losing the interest of women. I knew he was
married. Emma informed me that they had seven
children. The youngest had been born six months
before. Where? Why in the house in Gateshead
of course. Did I know Gateshead ?

I did. As I sat in that embrasured window and

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 157

looked down the thin deep slit of the Strada Lucia,
past green and saiFron balconies and jutting shrines,
to where the Harbour of Marsamuscetta showed a
patch of solid dark blue below the distant perfection
of Sliema, I thought of Gateshead, with the piercing
East Coast wind ravening along its gray dirty streets,
with its frowsy fringe of coal-staiths standing black
and stark above the icy river, and I heard the grind
and yammer of the grimy street-cars striving to
drown the harsh boom and crash from the great
yards at Elswick on the far bank. I saw myself
again hurrying along in the rain, a tired young man
in overalls, making hurried purchases of gear and
tobacco and rough gray blankets, for the ship sailed
on the turn of the tide. And I found it easy to
see the small two-story house half way down one of
those incredibly ignoble streets, the rain, driven by
the cruel wind, whipping against sidewalk and win-
dow, the front garden a mere puddle of mud, and
indoors a harassed dogged woman fighting her way
to the day's end while a horde of robust children
romped and gorged and blubbered around her.

"Seven," I murmured, and the bells of a herd of
goats made a musical commotion in the street be-
low.

** Seven," said Emma, refilling my cup.

"And he's not going home yet, even though he
has got out of the Navy," I observed with tactful
abstraction.

158 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

"That's just it," said Emma, "not going home.
He's gone into this salvage business you see. I be-
lieve it's a very good thing."

"Of course his wife gets her half pay," I mused.

"She gets all his pay,'^ accented Emma. "He
sends it all. He has other ways . . . you un-
derstand. Resources. But he won't go home.
You know, there's somebody here."

So here we were coming to it. It had been dawn-
ing on me, as I stared down at the blue of the Mar-
samuscetta, that possibly Heatly's interest for
Emma had been heightened by the fact that he was
a widower. Nothing so crude as that, however.
Something much more interesting to the high gods.
Between maturity and second childhood, if events
are propitious, men come to a period of augmented
curiosity fortified by a vague sense of duties accom-
plished. They acquire a conviction that beyond the
comfortable and humdrum vales of domestic felicity,
where they have lived so long, there lie peaks of
ecstasy and mountain ranges of perilous dalliance.
I roused suddenly.

"But now he's out of the Navy," I remarked.

"You mustn't think that," said Emma. "He
isn't that sort of man. I tell you, she's all right."

"Who.? The somebody who's here.?"

"No, his wife's all right as far as money goes.
But there's no sympathy between them. A man
can't go on all his Hfe without sympathy."

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 159

"What is she like?" I asked.

"Oh Fm not defending him," said Emma, with
her eyes fixed on the sugar-bowl. "Goodness knows
/Ve no reason to think well of men, and you're all

alike. Only, he's throwing himself away on a

Well, never mind. You'll see her. Here's your
room. You can have this connecting door open if
you Hke."

"Fine," I said, looking round and then walking
into a sort of vast and comfortable crypt. The
walls, five feet thick, were pierced on opposite sides
as for cannon, and one looked instinctively for the
inscriptions by prisoners and ribald witticisms by
sentries. There was the Strada Lucia again, beyond
a delicious green railing; and behind was another
recess, from whose shuttered aperture one beheld the
hotel courtyard with a giant tree swelling up and
almost touching the yellow walls. I looked at the
groined roof, the distant white-curtained bed, the
cupboards of blackwood, the tiled floor with its old
worn mats. I looked out of the window into the
street and was startled by an unexpectedly near view
of a saint in a blue niche by the window, a saint with
a long sneering nose and a supercilious expression as
she decHned her stony eyes upon the Strada Lucia.
I looked across the Strada Lucia and saw dark eyes
and disdainful features at magic casements. And I
told Emma that I would take the apartment.

"You'll find Mr. Heatly in the Cafe de la Reine,"

i6o HARBOURS OF MEMORY

she remarked gently, "he's there with Captain Gos-
nell."

But I did not want to see either Heatly or Cap-
tain Gosnell just yet. I said I would be back to
dinner, and took my cap and cane.

The Strada Reale was full. The Strada Reale is al-
ways full. It is the one street within the walls of
the city where one may promenade. It becomes
a ritual, walking up and down the Strada Reale.
Or rather it becomes a narcotic. One's individuality
becomes blurred. One evolves into a uniformed
automaton, nervously alert as to perambulating
ranks and ratings, noting with uncanny precision
the correctness of one man's sleeve-lace or the set of
another's wing-collar. This sort of morbid preoccu-
pation with harness and trappings is inevitable
among a host of young men not entirely certain of
their social status or of their right to the title of gen-
tility. One can figure, easily enough, how this self-
consciousness must have worked among the young
blades who came to Malta and dwelt in the monas-
teries of their orders. Trig young Provencals and
Bavarians, truculent Aragonese and close-lipped
Yorkshiremen, watching each other's points and
accoutrements as they clanked up and down Strada
Reale of an evening. So with us; and the busy scene,
the officers and men, singly and groups; the pros-
perous citizens at the doors of their bright Httle
stores; the stray Maltese girl hurrying along in that

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS i6i

enigmatic head-dress of hers; the inevitable thin Eng-
lish lady with a book from the Garrison Library; the
party of Japanese naval officers with their set and
eternal smile; the crush of bluejackets surging up and
deploying hastily to one side into taverns with names
inherited from Nelson's day; the sun setting in lusty
splendour beyond the great carved gateway at the
upper end — all this may be taken for granted by the
reader as we pass by subtler ways to the ramp
leading up to the Lower Barracca. Here, sitting in
the little circular garden above the bastions, we look
down on the world.

It was up here, smoking in solitary comfort and
looking out toward Senglea and beyond, where
towns and villages dotted the great golden plain,
that I got hold of the notion that this divagation
of Heatly was his peculiarly English way of respond-
ing to the invading beauty of his environment. I
began to suspect the avowed spiritual motives of
those old knights and turcopoliers who steadfastly re-
fused to return to their native lands, who remained
within the order, or who set forth on fantastic quests
in the domains of the Paynims. I could perceive,
looking down at the cobalt sea, the honey-coloured
promontories, the severe line of columned porticoes
of the Bighi Hospital, and the romantic riot of clear
colours in roofs and walls, that a reaction from a
dour north-country asceticism might be conceded.
I suspected that this revulsion, suddenly precipitated

i62 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

in a man's heart by a celibate existence in scenes of
sun-ripened loveliness, might account for many
strange episodes in history. Emma, full of sorrow-
ful experience, yet brooding over a man as though he
were a child of her own, was another manifestation
of nature's compensating contrivance. A sudden
curiosity assailed me. What if my theory were true,
that the exquisite beauty of this honey-coloured
island of the sea had some sort of radio-activity, as it
were, driving men to noble deeds of high endeavour
and women to greater charity? And walking down
again in the dusk, while the city and the harbour
decked themselves out in necklaces and girdles and
tiaras of many-coloured jewels, I realized that Heatly,
in cold fact, was doubtful material out of which to
fashion a hero. This brought on a struggle, between
heredity and environment as it were. It was neces-
sary to recall, with an effort, the house at Gateshead,
the seven children, and the tired woman toiHng all
day and far into the night. With the war won and
the country saved from invading hordes, her hus-
band deserts her. Once in the town again, however,
and climbing toward the Piazza San Giorgio, it no
longer required an effort to concentrate upon the
-deserted wife. A hasty retrospect confirmed the
suspicion that wives invariably flourish when de-
serted; that it is the deserting male, the reckless
ideaHst rushing about the world seeking a non-
existent felicity, who often ends in disaster. That

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 163

— and this came to mind as the Libreria was reached,
and I searched under the arches for a view of
Heatly — that the wives who are not deserted, but
who have to feed and clothe and comfort and scold
and advise, are the true objects of commiseration;
wives whose existence is given over to a ceaseless
vigil of cantankerous affection. And then I saw
Heatly and the suspicion was confirmed.

He was seated at a table with two other men, in
the shadow of one of the great columns. Just be-
hind him a young Maltese kneeled by a great long-
haired goat, which he was milking swiftly into a
glass for a near-by customer. Heatly, however,
was not drinking milk. He was talking. There
were three of them and their heads were together
over the drinks on the little marble table. They
were so absorbed that I sat down to watch them
from a distance.

Through the corridor of the arcades poured a
stream of promenaders from the side alleys and
augmented each moment by groups from the Strada
Reale. The great bells of the Cathedral began to
boom, and a military band in front of the Garrison
was playing a march that came to us in vague shrill
whimpers and deadened thumps on a drum. A flock
of goats filed by, tinkling their bells with an air of
absurd vanity. Beggars materialized in a dis-
concerting manner from nowhere, and remained
motionless with extended palms. Waiters, holding

i64 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

aloft trays in miraculous equilibrium, glided among
the crowded tables in the square or shot at express
speed into the cafe. A party of priests sat just
within the door, emblems of respectable conviviality.
Families grew modestly riotous over their grenadine
and cakes, and children ran shrieking into the
Square to play touch or foUow-my-leader round the
statue of Queen Victoria.

All this was going on and the three men at the
little marble table took no notice at all. As I watched
them, the man next to Heatly, whom I guessed to be
Captain Gosnell, turned his head and stared round
vacantly at the scene. Yet it was evident he had in
no way retired from the intense intimacy of the con-
versation, for he immediately looked sharply at the
others and nodded. There was about these men
an aura of supreme happiness. As they regarded
each other their eyeballs took on the benevolent
and preoccupied opacity of sculptured bronze. For
all their easy civilian garb they conveyed the im-
pression of a gathering of proconsuls or knight-
commanders of outlying protectorates. In the
light of a match-flare, as they lit fresh cigarettes,
their features showed up harsh and masculine, the
faces of men who dealt neither in ideas nor in emo-
tions, but in prejudices and instincts and desires.
They were entirely of the world in which they lived.
Between them and reality there came no troubling
thoughts, no fantastic dreams of art, philosophy,

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 165

or religion. That is why, one suspects, they con-
veyed the impression of truculent and exclusive
happiness. For them the gay scene, the dignified
and frumpish statue of royalty, the enormous wall
of the Governor's Palace with its sculptured and
variegated corbels, the peremptory strains of the
military band, the delicate sky with its faint yet
brilliant stars, were all merely accessories to their
personal well-being. Into this galaxy of acceptable
facts I was abruptly initiated, for Heatly turned and
saw me, and further contemplation was out of the
question.

And of that evening and the tale they told me,
there is no record by the alert psychologist. There
is a roseate glamour over a confusion of memories.
There are recollections of exalted emotions and un-
paralleled eloquence. We traversed vast distances
and returned safely, arm in arm. We were the gen-
erals of famous campaigns, the heroes of colossal
achievements and the conquerors of proud and beau-
tiful women. From the swaying platforms of the
Fourth Dimension we caught glimpses of starry
destinies. We stood on the shoulders of the lesser
gods to see our enemies confounded. And out of
the mist and fume of the evening emerged a shadowy
legend of the sea.

By a legerdemain which seemed timely and agree-

i66 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

ably inexplicable the marble table under the arcade
of the Libreria became a linen-covered table in an
immense and lofty chamber. We were at dinner.
The ceiling was gilded framework of panelled paint-
ings. Looking down upon us from afar were well-
fed anchorites and buxom saints. Their faces
gleamed from out of a dark polished obscurity and
their ivory arms emerged from the convolutions of
ruby and turquoise velvet draperies. Tall cande-
labra supported coloured globes which shed a mellow
radiance upon the glitter of silver and crystal. There
was a sound of music which rose and fell as some
distant door swung to and fro; the air still trembled
with the pulsing reverberations of a great gong; and
a thin whine, which was the food-elevator ascending
in dry grooves from the kitchen, seemed to spur
the fleet-footed waiters to a frenzy of service. High
cabinets of darkwood stood between tall, narrow
windows, housing collections of sumptuous plates
and gilded wares. On side tables heaps of bread
and fruit made great masses of solid colour, of
gamboge, saffron, and tawny orange. Long-necked
bottles appeared recHning luxuriously in wicker
cradles, like philosophic pagans about to bleed to
death. At a table by the distant door sits the little
boy with the freckled nose and beautiful gray eyes.
He writes in a large book as the waiters pause on
tip-toe, dishes held as though in votive offering to a
red Chinese dragon on the mantel above the boy's

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 167

head. He writes, and looking out down the entrance
suddenly laughs in glee. From the corridor come
whoops and a staccato cackle of laughter followed
by a portentous roll of thunder from the great gong.
The boy puts his hand over his mouth in his ecstasy,
the waiters grin as they hasten, the head waiter
moves over from the windows thinking seriously,
and one has a vision of Emma, mildly distraught, at
the door. Captain Gosnell, holding up the corner of
his serviette, remarks that they are coming, and
studies the wine-list.

They rush in, and a monocled major at a near-by
table pauses, fork in air over his fried sea-trout, and
glares. In the forefront of the bizarre procession
comes Heatly, with a Russian guardsman on his back.
The other two guardsmen follow, dancing a stately
measure, revolving with rhythmic gravity. Behind,
waltzing alone, is Mr. Marks, the mate. Instantly,
however, the play is over. They break away, the
guardsman sHps to the floor, and they all assume a
demeanour of impenetrable reserve as they walk
decorously toward us. They sit, and become
merged in the collective mood of the chamber. Yet
one has a distinct impression of a sudden glimpse
into another world — as though the thin yet durable
membrane of existence had split open a Httle, and
one saw, for a single moment, men as they really are.

And while I am preoccupied with this fancy,
which is mysteriously collated in the mind with a

i68 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

salmis of quails, Captain Gosnell becomes articulate.
He is explaining something to me. It is time Cap-
tain Gosnell should be described. He sits on my
left, a portly powerful man with a large red nose
and great baggy pouches under his stern eyes. It
is he who tells the story. I watch him as he dissects
his quail. Of his own volition he tells me he has
twice swallowed the anchor. And here he is, still
on the job. Did he say twice.? Three times count-
ing ; well, it was this way. First of all, an aunt

left him a little money and he quit a second mate's
job to start a small provision store. Failed. Had
to go to sea again. Then he married. Wife had
a little money, so they started again. Prospered.
Two stores, both doing well. Two counters, I am
to understand. Canned goods, wines, and spirits
on one side; meats and so forth on the other. High-
class clientele. Wonderful head for business, Mrs.
Gosnell's. He himself, understand, not so dusty.
Had a way with customers. Could sell pork in a
synagogue, as the saying is. And then Mrs. Gosnell
died. Great shock to him, of course, and took all
the heart out of him. Buried her and went back to
sea. She was insured, and later, with what little
money he had, started an agency for carpet-sweeping
machinery. Found it difficult to get on with his
captain you see, being a senior man in a junior billet.
As I very likely am aware, standing rigging makes
poor running gear. Was doing a very decent little

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 169

business too, when — the war. So he went into the
Naval Reserve. That's how it all came about.
Now, his idea is to go back, with the experience he
has gained, and start a store again. Merchandising
in his opinion, is the thing of the future. With a
little money, the thing can be done. Well!

It is difficult to see the exact bearing all this auto-
biography has upon the officers at the next table.
Never mind. Listen. Captain Gosnell repeats his
statement that he entered the Naval Reserve.
Well. Don't forget the war had done for his little
business. His own personality was the principal
good-will in that. And now the war was over, what
was there in it for him? Second Mate's billet! No
fear! Not again. However! So he got finally
into the mine-laying. No particular picnic for a
man his age, you understand, but it had to be done
by responsible people or they would never get the
eggs laid. That was his expression, which seemed to
me, in the light of his revelations, to deserve a smile.
Er, well, yes. From force of habit he used a phrase
from the provision business. Could I imagine him
with a white apron tied high up under his arm-pits.?
That was his idea. Everything white. White
enamel, glazed tiles, one of those revolving cutter
machines for ham, and a cash register finished in
Sheraton or Chippendale — eh what?

But it was necessary to have a little capital. Say
five thousand. So here we were.

I70 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

A bad attack of pneumonia with gastritis nearly
finished him at Dover. Doctor said if he got away
to a warmer cHmate it would make a new man of
him. So a chat with a Surgeon-Commander in Lon-
don resulted in him being appointed to a mine-layer
bound for the eastern Mediterranean. Perhaps
I had heard of her. The Ouzel, Side-wheeler built
for the excursionists. Started away from Devonport
and took her to Port Said. Imagine it! Think of
her bouncing from one mountainous wave to another,
off Finisterre. Think of her turning over and over,
almost, going round St. Vincent. Fine little craft
for all that. Heatly here was Chief. Marks here
was Mate. It was a serious responsibility.

At this Mr. Heatly interjects a bitter reflection
upon the coupling bolts of the paddle-shaft. Snapped
like carrots, one or two a day. And only a couple
of flat-footed dockyard men to keep watches. Still,
he snarled, they all helped. Gosnell here, up to his
eyes in it, fetching and carrying, swinging the big
hammer like a sportsman and doing exactly what
he was told.

Captain Gosnell, with his flushed severe features
quite unmoved by this revelation of his efficiency,
and his stem eyes fixed upon his roast partridge,
proceeded with his story.

And when they reached Port Said, they were
immediately loaded with mines and sent straight
out again to join the others who were laying a com-

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 171

plicated barrage about fifty miles north. Four days
out, one day in. It wasn't so bad at first, being one
of a company, with constant signalling and visits in
fine weather. But later, when the Ouzel floated
alone in an immense blue circle of sea and sky, they
began to get acquainted. This took the common
Enghsh method of discovering, one by one, each
other's weaknesses, and brooding over them in
secret. What held them together most firmly ap-
pears to have been a sort of sophisticated avoidance
of women. Not in so many words. Captain Gosnell
assures me, but taking it for granted, they found a
common ground in ** Keeping in the fairway."
Marks was a bachelor it is true, but Marks had no
intention of being anything else. Marks had other
fish to fry, I am to understand.

I look at Marks, who sits opposite to me. He
has a full round face, clean-shaved and flexible as
an actor's. His rich brown hair, a thick solid-look-
ing auburn thatch, suddenly impresses me with its
extreme incongruity. As I look at him he puts up
his hand, pushes his hair slowly up over his forehead
like a cap, reveaHng a pink scalp, rolls the whole
contrivance from side to side and brings it back to
its normal position.

More for comfort than anything else, Captain
Gosnell assures me, for nobody is deceived by a wig
Hke that. What is a man to do when he has pretty
near the whole top of his head blown off by a gas-

172 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

ometer on the western front exploding? There's
Marks, minus his hair and everything else, pretty
well, buried in a pit of loose cinders. Lamp-post
blown over, lying across him. Marks lay quiet
enough, thinking. He wasn't dead, he could breathe,
and one hand moved easily in the cinders. Began
to paddle with that hand. Went on thinking and
paddling. Soon he could move the other hand.
Head knocking against the lamp-post, he paddled
downward. Found he was moving slowly forward.
Head clear of the lamp-post. Gritty work, swim-
ing, as it were, in loose ashes. Hands in shocking
condition. Scalp painful. Lost his hair but kept
his head. Suddenly his industriously paddling
hands swirled into the air, jerking legs drove him
upward, and he spewed the abrasive element from
his lips. He had come back. And had brought an
idea with him. Before he went into the Army,
Marks was second officer in the Marchioness Line,
afflicted with dreams of inventing unsinkable ships
and collapsible lifeboats. Now he came back to
life with a brand new notion. What was it ? Well,
we'd be having a run over to the ship by and bye
and I would see it. It could do everything except
sing a comic song.

"And now I'm going to tell you," said Captain
Gosnell, pushing away the Glace Napolitaine and
selecting several stalks of celery to eat with his
cheese. Quite apart from the mellowing process

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 173

which has been going on since five o'clock, Captain
Gosnell is fully equipped for telling anything. He
has the gift of recounting experiences, real and
imaginary, which is quite a different thing from
eloquence or rhetorical power. His mentality is of
that objective type which is entirely unaware of
self-consciousness. He is alive at all times to the
fantastic whimsies which are for ever playing across
the minds of coarse, common men. He perceives
the humour of the situation, the intrinsic value of the
adventure as he tells it.

"We had been relieved one evening," he observes,
** and were about hull down and under when I ordered
*Dead slow' for a few hours. The reason for this was
that at full speed we would reach Port Said about
three in the afternoon, and it was generally ad-
vised to arrive after sunset or even after dark. I
set a course to pass round to the eastward of a field
we had laid a week or so before, instead of to the
westward. This is a simple enough matter of run-
ning off the correct distance, for the current, if any-
thing, increased the margin of safety. We were
making about four knots, with the mine-field on the
starboard bow, as I calculated, and we were enjoying
a very pleasant supper in my cabin, which had been
the passenger saloon in the Ouzel's excursion days,
a fine large room on the upper deck with big windows,
like a house ashore. The old bus was chugging
along and from my table you could see the horizon

174 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

all round except just astern which was hid by the
funnel. Nothing there however but good salt water
and the Holy Land a long way behind. It was hke
sitting in a conservatory. The sea was as smooth
as glass, with a fine haze to the southward. This
haze, as far as I could judge, was moving north at
about the same speed as we were going south, which
would make it eight knots, and in an hour we would
be in it. I mention this because it explains why
the three of us, sitting in a cabin on an upper deck,
saw the battleship, all together, all at once, and quite
near. We all went on the bridge.

"Everybody else, apparently, saw her too. You
couldn't very well help it. The guns were on her
and our one signalman was standing by his halyards.
The idea in everybody's head of course was the
Goehen. The Goeben was a sort of nightmare in
those days. Our mine-fields were partly designed
to get the Goehen. Supposing she did come out, and
supposing she had the luck to get past the Grecian
Arches, she could pound Port Said to pieces and
block the canal with sunk ships before anything big
enough to hurt her could get within five hundred
miles of us. And she could get away again, with
her speed. The Goehen used to give our people
a sinking feeling in the pit of the stomach, I can tell
you.

"But this wasn't the Goehen. That ship was as
well-known to us as the Victory at Portsmouth or

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 175

the London Monument. This thing coming straight
out from Port Said was a vessel with three enormous
funnels standing straight, huge masts Hke factory
chimneys, with square fighting-tops. The haze
magnified her, you understand, and to us in that
wooden tub of an Ouzel, she seemed larger than any
ship we had ever heard of.

"Now you must understand," went on Captain
Gosnell, "that the subject of conversation between
us while we were at supper was money. We were
discussing the best way of getting hold of money and
the absolute necessity of capital after the war if we
were to get anywhere. This war, you know, has
been a three-ringed circus for the young fellows.
But to men like us it hasn't been anything of the
sort. We have a very strong conviction that some of
us are going to feel the draft. We aren't so young as
we used to be, and a little money would be a blessing.
Well, we were talking about our chances; of salvage,
prize-money, bonuses, and so forth. Our principal
notion, if I remember that evening, was to go into
business and pool our resources. For one thing, we
wanted to keep up the association. And then out
of the Lord knows where came this great gray war-
ship heading straight "

Captain Gosnell paused and regarded me with an
austere glance. Mr. Marks and Heatly were listen-
ing and looking at us watchfully. And over Mr.
Marks's shoulder I could see the three officers with

176 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

their polychromatic uniforms gleaming in the soft
orange radiance of shaded lamps. One was leaning
over and examining the contents of an ice-bucket
beside him. Another, the green-and-gold one, was
cracking walnuts. The third sat back, smiling, his
gorgeously laced sleeve extended to where he twiddled
a wine-glass.

"You understand what I mean?" said Captain
Gosnell, reaching for a cigarette. "Or perhaps you
don't. We stood on the bridge watching that ship
come up on us, watching her through our glasses, and
we did not attach any particular importance to her
appearance. A couple of shells from her eighteen-
pounders would have sunk us. When we saw the
Russian ensign astern it did not mean a great deal to
us. She was as much an anomaly in those terrible
waters as a line-of-battle ship of Nelson's day. That
was what staggered us. What use was she? An
enormous, valuable ship like that coming out into
such a sea. Suddenly the value of her, the money
she cost, the money she was worth, so near and yet so
far, came home to us. I had an imaginary view of
her, you understand, for a moment as something I
could sell; a sort of fanciful picture of her possibilities
in the junk line. Think of the brass and rubber
alone, in a ship like that! And then we all simul-
taneously realized just what was happening. I
think I had my hand stretched out to the whistle
lanyard when there was a heavy, bubbling grunt, and

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 177

she rolled over toward us as though some invisible
hand had given her a push. She rolled back to
an even keel and began pitching a very little. This
was due, I believe, to the sudden going astern of her
engines coupled with the mine throwing her over-
Pitched a little, and for some extraordinary reason
her forward twelve-inch guns were rapidly elevated
as though some insane gunner was going to take a
shot at the North Star before going down. From
what we gathered, later, there were things going on
inside that turret which are unpleasant to think
about. I'll tell you. But first of all, there was that
ship, twenty-five thousand tons of her, going through
a number of peculiar evolutions. Like most battle-
ships she had four anchors in her bows, and suddenly
they all shot out their hawse-pipes and fell into the
sea, while clouds of red dust came away, as though
she was breathing fire and smoke at us through her
nostrils. Very vivid impression we had of that.
And then she began to swing round on them, so that
as we came up to her she showed us her great rounded
armoured counter with its captain's gallery and a little
white awning to keep off the sun. And what we
saw then passed anything in my experience on this
earth, ashore or afloat. We were coming up on her,
you know, and we had our glasses so that as the
stern swung on us we had a perfectly close view of
that gallery. There were two bearded men sitting
there in uniforms covered with gold lace and dangling

178 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

decorations, smoking cigarettes, each in a large
wicker chair on either side of a table. Behind them
the big armoured doors were open and the mahogany
slides drawn back and we could see silver and china
and very elaborate electrical fittings shining on the
table, and men in white coats walking about without
any anxiety at all. On the stern was a great golden
two-headed eagle and a name in their peculiar wrong-
way-round lettering which Serge told us later was
Fontanka. And they sat there, those two men with
gray beards on their breasts like large bibs, smoking
and chatting and pointing out the Ouzel to each
other. It was incredible. And in the cabin behind
them servants went round and round, and a lamp
was burning in front of a large picture of the Virgin
in a glittering frame. I can assure you their placid
demeanour almost paralyzed us. We began to won-
der if we hadn't dreamed what had gone before, if we
weren't still dreaming. But she continued to swing
and we continued to come up on her, so that soon
we had a view along her decks again and we knew
well enough we weren't dreaming very much.

"For those decks were alive with men. They
moved continually, replacing each other like a mass
of insects on a beam. It appeared, from where we
were, a cable's length or so, Hke an orderly panic.
There must have been five or six hundred of them
climbing, running, walking, pushing, pulling, like
one of those football matches at the big schools

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 179

where everybody plays at once. And then our
whistle blew. I give you my word I did it quite
unconsciously, in my excitement. If it had been
Gabriel's trumpet it could not have caused greater
consternation. I think a good many of them
thought it was Gabriel's trumpet. It amounted to
that almost, for the Fontanka took a sort of slide
forward at that moment and sank several feet by the
head. All those hundreds of men mounted the rails
and put up their hands and shouted. It was the
most horrible thing. They stood there, with up-
lifted hands and their boats half-lowered and
shouted. I believe they imagined that I was going
alongside to take them off. But I had no such
intention. The OuzeVs sponsons would have been
smashed, her paddles wrecked, and we would prob-
ably have gone to the bottom along with them. We
looked at each other and shouted in sheer fury at
their folly. We bawled and made motions to lower
their boats. I put the helm over and moved off a
little and ordered our own boat down. The fog was
coming up and the sun was going down. The only
thing that was calm was the sea. It was like a lake.
Suddenly several of the Fontanka^s boats almost
dropped into the water and the men began to slide
down the falls like strings of blue and white beads.
She took another slide, very slow, but very sickening;
to see. I fixed my glasses on the superstructure
between the funnels where a large steel crane curved

i8o HARBOURS OF MEMORY

over a couple of launches with polished brass funnels.
And I was simply appalled to find a woman sitting
in one of the launches with her arms round a little
boy. She was quite composed, apparently, and was
watching three men who were working very hard
about the crane. The launch began to rise in the
air and two of the men climbed into her. She rose
and the crane swung outward. We cheered like
maniacs when she floated. In a flash the other man
was climbing up the curve of the crane and we saw
him slide down the wire into the launch.

"You wouldn't believe," said Captain Gosnell,
rolling his napkin into a ball and dropping it beside
his plate, "how it heartened us to see a thing done
like that, clean and complete. There was even
smoke coming out of the brass funnel. No doubt
the launch had been in use in Port Said an hour or
two before, and the fire was still in her. She moved,
very slowly, away from the ship's side, and the
woman sat there with her arms round the little boy,
surrounded by large trunks and bags, exactly as
though she were disembarking at Plymouth or
Southampton, say.

"By this time, you must understand, the other
boats were full of men, and one of them was cast off^
while men were sliding down the falls. They held
on with one hand and waved the other at the men
above, who proceeded in a very systematic way to
slide on top of them and then the whole bunch would

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS i8i

carry away altogether and vanish with a sort of
compound splash. And then men began to come
out of side scuttles. They were in a great hurry,
those chaps. A head would appear and then shoul-
ders and arms working violently. The man would
be just getting his knees in a purchase on the scuttle
frame when he would shoot clean out head first into
the sea. And another head, the head of the man who
had pushed him, would come out.

"But don't forget," warned Captain Gosnell, as
we rose and began to walk toward the door, "don't
forget that all these things were happening at once,
within the space of, roughly, a minute. Don't forget
the Fontanka was still swarming with men, that the
sun was just disappearing, very red, in the west,
that the ship's bows were about level with the
water, and that for all anybody knew the two
bearded officers were still sitting in their little
gallery finishing their drinks. Don't forget all
this," urged Captain Gosnell, and he 'paused outside
an open door through which the others had passed.
"And then, when you've got that all firmly fixed in
your mind, she turns right over, shows the great
red belly of her for perhaps twenty seconds, and
sinks."

Captain Gosnell held the match for a moment
longer to his cigar, threw the stick on the floor and
strode into the room, leaving me to imagine the thing
he had described.

1 82 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

It was an immense room, even for that building of
immense rooms. Three great beds stood in a row
between two high windows, beds with mosquito
screens like brailed-up mainsails depending from
spars above them. Broad beams of rough-hewn
timber supported the roof. There were tables and
chairs and lounges in distant corners, writing cabi-
nets, and clothes-presses with doors like the front
portals of imposing mansions. There was a piano,
at which one of the officers in uniform was playing
while Heatly danced with an imaginary partner.
Mr. Marks, with a just appraisal of the dimensional
peculiarities of the apartment, had drawn a golf-
stick from a bag hanging from a cornice and was
carefully putting a ball of twine into an imaginary
hole in the centre of the carpet. And behind me
came Emma in her demure evening attire of black
and white, bearing a tray with small glasses.

There is something to be said for the method
adopted in some foreign military services of corrobo-
rating introductions by standing rigidly at attention
and announcing one's own name in a loud, clear voice.
Our English way of murmuring "Meet Mr.
m-m-m," is far from perfect. There was nothing
ceremonious in the demeanour of those three gentle-
men in spite of their splendour of attire. One
was inevitably afflicted with a suspicion that the
cerise breeches, the blue tunics, and glossy russia-
leather hessians were no more than properties hired

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 183

for an evening masquerade. Out of the tunics came
sinewy necks surmounted by features stamped with
austere experiences and shadowed by character
matured against odds of fortune and numbers and
circumstances. Their frivoHty was obviously the
hoHday mood engendered by their temporary so-
journ in this fabulous isle of golden sunlight and
honey-coloured towns and ultramarine harbours.
They were as incongruous as Heatly and his friends.
They moved about in that vast and ancient chamber
like the fantastic figures of a romantic opera. The
uniforms, the music, the liquors, became blended
into a species of confusing and delightful languor.
An elysium from which one looked down upon
harsh continents of reality and saw the drama of
sudden death upon calm seas red with the setting
sun.

And these three, in their deftly handled and slow-
moving launch, with their incredible passengers, the
woman with her arms round a little boy, were the
first to board the Ouzel. Captain Gosnell had
stopped his engines, for the sea was thick with
swimming and floating men. They explained through
Serge, who had climbed down the crane — a man of
extended experience in polar regions — that they
were officers in the Imperial Russian Army entrusted
with the safe conduct of the lady and her child, and
therefore claimed precedence over naval ratings.
That was all very well, of course; but the naval rat-

1 84 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

ings were already swarming up the low fenders of the
Ouzel, climbing the paddle boxes and making excel-
lent use of the ropes and slings flung to them by the
OuzeVs crew. The naval ratings were displaying
the utmost activity on their own account, im-
mediately manned the launch, and set off to garner
the occupants of rafts and gratings. Even in her
excursion days the Ouzel had never had so many
passengers. Captain Gosnell would never have
beHeved, if he hadn't seen it, that five hundred odd
souls could have found room to breathe on her
decks and in her alleyways, all dripping sea-water.
Captain Gosnell, leaning back on the maroon velvet
settee and drawing at his cigar, nodded toward the
talented Serge, who was now playing an intricate
version of "Tipperary,'' with many arpeggios, and
remarked that he had to use him as an interpreter.
The senior naval oflficer saved was a gentleman who
came aboard in his shirt and drawers and a gold
wrist-watch, having slipped oflF his clothes on the
bridge before jumping; but he spoke no Enghsh.
Serge spoke "pretty good English." Serge inter-
preted excellently. Having seen the lady and her
little boy, who had gray eyes and a freckled nose,
installed in the main cabin, he drew the Captain
aside and explained to him the supreme importance
of securing the exact position of the foundered ship,
"in case it was found possible to raise her."

"We had a short conversation," said the Captain

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 185

to me, **and from what he told me, I gathered his
real reasons for wanting the position. There was no
difficulty about that. We had a chart of the mine-
field. The next thing was to get to Port Said. It
was an impossible situation for long. We literally
had to climb over Russian sailors whenever we
moved.

"And when we got in, and transferred the men to
hospital and I had made my report, they gave me no
information to speak of about the ship. I don't
think they were very clear themselves what she was
to do, beyond making for the Adriatic. As for the
passengers, they never mentioned them at all, so of
course I held my tongue and drew my conclusions.
Serge told me they had been bound for an Italian
port whence his party were to proceed to Paris.
Now he would have to arrange passages to Mar-
seilles. He took suites in the Marina Hotel, inter-
viewed agents and banks, hired a motor car, and had
uniforms made by the best Greek tailor in the town.
We were living at the Marina while ashore, you see,
and so it was easy for us to get very friendly. Heatly,
there, was soon very friendly with the lady."

I looked at Heatly, who was now amiably disput-
ing the last shot Mr. Marks had made from the tee,
and then at Captain Gosnell. The experienced
listener lies in wait for this, and if he makes full use of
his experience, puts leading questions at once.

"No," said Captain Gosnell with perfect frank-

i86 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

ness. "Not in the very slightest degree. Nothing
of that. If you ask me, I should call it a sort of —
chivalry. Anybody who thinks there was ever
anything — or — ^what you suggest — has no concep-
tion of the real facts of the case."

This was surprising, even in that phantasmal
elysium where we sat enthroned, discussing the
actions of the mortals below. It seemed to put
Emma in an equivocal position, and my respect for
that woman made me reluctant to doubt her in-
telligence. But Captain Gosnell was in a better
position than Emma to give evidence. Captain
Gosnell was conscious that a man can run right
through the hazards of existence and come out the
other side with his fundamental virtues unimpaired.
They all shared this sentiment, I gathered, for this
lonely woman with the bronze hair and gray eyes;
but Heatly's imagination had been touched to an
extraordinary degree. In their interminable dis-
cussion concerning their future movements, dis-
cussions highly technical in their nature, because
investigating a sunken armoured warship is a highly
technical affair, Heatly would occasionally interject
a word emphasizing the importance of giving her a
fair deal. They were all agreed. Serge was of the
opinion that if they recovered a tenth of the bullion
which her husband, who had a platinum concession
in the Asiatic Urals, had consigned to his agent in
Paris, there would be enough for all. Serge, in

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 187

short, became the active spirit of the enterprise. He
knew how to obtain funds from mysterious firms who
had quiet offices down secluded alleys near Copthall
Court and Great St. Helen's in London. He made
sketches and explained where the stuff was stowed,
and, presuming the ship to be in such and such a
position, what bulkheads had to be penetrated to
get into her. He obtained permission to accompany
the Ouzel on her four-day cruises, and they never had
a dull moment. He brought water colours along,
purchased at immense expense from the local ex-
tortioners, and made astonishing drawings of his
hosts and their excursion steamer. He sang songs in
a voice like a musical snarl, songs in obscure dialects,
songs in indecent French, songs in booming Russian.
He danced native Russian dances, and the click of his
heels was like a pneumatic calking-tool at work on a
rush job. His large serious face, with the long finely
formed nose, the sensitive mouth, the sad dark eyes
suddenly illuminated by a beautiful smile, the in-
numerable tiny criss-cross corrugations above the
cheek-bones which are the marks of life in polar
regions, fascinated the Englishmen. Without ever
admitting it in so many words, they knew him to be
that extremely rare phenomenon, a leader of men on
hazardous and lonely quests. Without being at all
certain of his name, which was polysyllabic and
rather a burden to an Anglo-Saxon larynx, they
discovered his character with unerring accuracy.

i88 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

When the Greek tailor had completed their uni-
forms according to instructions (and after three
years of humdrum khaki and white that Greek
tailor almost wept over the commission), and the
three Russian officers began to startle Port Said, the
three Englishmen remained secure in their con-
victions. From the very first they seem to have
been very conscious of the spiritual aspect of the
adventure. They listened to the tittle-tattle of the
hotel bars and the Casino dances, and refrained from
comment. The scheme grew in their minds and pre-
occupied them. Mr. Marks and Heatly spent days
and nights over strange designs, and Heatly himself
worked at the bench in the port alleyway, between
the paddle-box and the engine room, constructing
perplexing mechanical monstrosities.

Captain Gosn ell's method of telling his tale may
have had its defects, but it was admirably adapted
to the time and the atmosphere. It gave one an
opportunity to imagine the scenes, supposing one
knew Port Said. And knowing Port Said, that
populous spit of sand and scandal, where every
European woman has been mercilessly dissected
and put together again (all wrong, of course), one
inevitably endeavoured to visualize the lonely woman
in her hotel suite, with its frail balcony overlooking
the crowded Canal, and wondered how she fared
at the hands of the coteries at the Saturday night
dances at the Casino, or during the post-prandial

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 189

drinking in the smoke room of the Eastern Exchange.
The httle boy would have a great time on the beach,
or hunting crabs on the rocks near the De Lesseps
statue. It came out, however, that she — for they
avoided her formidable surname, referring to her
by the pronoun or familiarly as Bionda — only used
the motor car and remained slightly indisposed all
the time. Their first ship, from Nikolaevsk to Kobe,
had been in collision. There was nothing out of the
way in a woman keeping secluded after these ex-
periences. Vanished to Cairo and Alexandria and
paid lengthy visits to high officials who dwelt in
magnificent villas at Ismaiha. Her remoteness only
sublimated the regard of the men who had saved her.
This became clearer, the longer Captain Gosnell
talked of that time. And at that time, too, she was
remote because she was still supposedly wealthy,
beyond their station in life, independent of their
solicitude.

But as weeks went by and Serge continued to
communicate with Paris and London, it became
clear that he was not at all easy in his mind. Some
people say, of course, that no Russian is easy in
his mind; but this was an altruistic anxiety. He
judged it would be best if they were to get on to
Paris, where Bionda had relatives and he himself
could resume active operations again.

And so they started, this time in a French mail-
boat bound for Marseilles. Our three mine-sweepers

I90 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

saw them off. And Captain Gosnell, as we walked
up the Strada Stretta and emerged upon the briUiant
Strada Reale, was able to convey a hint of the actual
state of affairs.

"She knew nothing/' he said. "She was still
under the impression that there would always be an
endless stream of money coming from somebody
in Paris, or London. She was, if you can excuse
the word, like a child empress. But there wasn't
any such stream. Serge and the others had a little
of their own ; but hers was mostly in an ammunition
chamber on B deck in a foundered warship, along
with the bullion, bound to the Siberian Bank. She
wasn't worrying about money at all. She was wish-
ing she was in Marseilles, for her experiences on
ships hadn't given her a very strong confidence in
their safety. And Serge was anxious to get her to
Paris to her relatives before what money she had
ran out.

"But she never reached Marseilles. They were
two days off Malta when an Austrian submarine
torpedoed the French liner and sank her. They did
not fire on the boats. And our lady friend found
herself being rowed slowly toward a place of which
she had no knowledge whatever. Serge told us
they were pulling for eighteen hours before they
were picked up."

"And she is here now?" I asked cautiously.

"Here now," said Captain Gosnell. "She usually

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 191

comes down here for an hour in the evening. If
she's here, I'll introduce you."

We passed across the Piazza Regina, among tables
and chairs stacked for the night, for the air was now
cold. Within the cafe we found much cheerful
company, for it was a saint's day of some sort and
family parties from Cospicua and Civita Vecchia
were loth to quit the cakes and wine for the long
dark ride home. Some naval gentlemen were
gulping their last round of drinks before descending
to the Harbour, and a number of seafarers from
a freighter, not quite comprehending the sort of
hostelry they were patronizing, were making a noise.

She was sitting on a plush lounge at the extreme
rear of the cafe, and when I first set eyes on her I was
disappointed. I had imagined something much
more magnificent, more alluring, than this. In
spite of Captain Gosnell's severely prosaic narrative
of concrete facts, he had been unable to keep from
me the real inspiration of the whole adventure. I
was prepared to murmur, "Was this the face that
launched a thousand ships?" and so on as far as I
could remember of that famous bit of rant. One
gets an exalted notion of women who are credited
with such powers, who preserve some vestige of
the magic that can make men "immortal with a
kiss." Bionda, in a large fur coat and broad-
brimmed hat of black velvet, had cloaked her divin-
ity, and the first impression was Christian rather

192 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

than pagan. '"A tired saint," I thought, as I sat
down after the introduction and looked at the pale
bronze hair and the intelHgent gray eyes. She had a
very subtle and pretty way of expressing her ap-
preciation of the homage rendered by these diverse
masculine personalities. Her hands, emerging from
the heavy fur sleeves, were white and extremely
thin, with several large rings. She had nothing to
say to a stranger, which was natural enough, and I
sat in silence watching her. She spoke English with
musical deliberation, rolling the r's and hesitating at
times in a choice of words, so that one waited with
pleasure upon her pauses and divined the rhythm
of her thoughts. She preserved in all its admirable
completeness that mystery concerning their ulti-
mate purpose in the world which is so essential to
women in the society of men. And it was therefore
with some surprise that I heard her enunciate with
intense feeling, "Oh, never, never, never!" There
was an expression of sad finality about it. She was
conveying to them her fixed resolve never to board
a ship again. Ships had been altogether too much
for her. She did not like the sea in any case and
rarely visited the Harbour. She had been inland all
her life and her recent catastrophes had robbed
her of her reserves of fortitude. She would remain
here in this island. She sat staring at the marble
table as though she saw in imagination the infinite
reaches of the ocean — blue, green, gray, or black,

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 193

forever fluid and treacherous, a sinister superficies
beneath which the bodies and achievements of men
disappeared as into some unknown lower region.
Women have many vahd reasons for hating the
sea; this woman seemed dimly aware of a certain
jealousy of it — of the alluring masculine element
which destroyed men without any aid from women
at all. Her faith in ships had not suflPered ship-
wreck so much as foundered. There was no use
arguing that the distance to Marseilles was a mere
four or five days. If it were only as many hours
— never, never, never!

Suddenly she gathered up her gloves and trinkets
and said she must be going as it was late. She had
worked hard that day and was tired. Would some-
body escort her as far as the Strada Mezzodi?
We rose, and as if by preconcerted arrangement,
divided into two parties. It was the general rule,
I gathered, that the gentlemen who had acted as
her bodyguard for so long should undertake this
nightly duty. We filed out into the deserted square,
and the last view we had of them was the small
fur-clad figure tripping away up the empty and
romantic street while over her towered the three
tall soldiers, looking like benevolent brigands in
their dark cloaks. As we turned in the other
direction, toward the Grand Harbour, Captain
Gosnell remarked that they were going down to
the ship, and if I cared to come they could show

194 HARBOVRS OF MEMORY

me something I had probably never seen before.
We descended the stone stairs leading to the Customs
House Quay. While they conversed in low tones
among themselves I turned the matter over in my
mind. To see them diving with long strides down
those broad shallow steps, the solitary lamps burn-
ing before dim shrines high up, lighting their forms
as for some religious mystery, they appeared as men
plunging in the grip of powerful and diverse emotions.
The Captain was plain enough to any intelligence.
He desired money that he might maintain his posi-
tion in England — a country where it is almost
better to lose one's soul than one's position. Mr.
Marks, beneath the genial falsity of a wig, concealed
an implacable fidelity to a mechanical ideal. Heatly,
on the other hand, was not so easily analyzed as
Emma had suggested. He appeared the inarticulate
victim of a remote and magnificent devotion. He
gave the impression of a sort of proud irritability
that he should have been thus afflicted. There
might easily be no remorse in his heart, since he
was justified in assuming that a wife with seven
children would be simply bewildered if she were made
the object of such a romantic extravagance. So
far as could be ascertained, he was a little bewildered
by it himself.

So we came down to the water, and walked along
the quay until we hailed a small, broad-beamed
steamer, very brightly lit, yet solitary so that Cap-

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 195

tain Gosnell had to use a silver whistle which he
carried, and the shrill blast reechoed from the high
ramparts of the Castle of Sant' Angelo. A boat
came slowly toward us, showing sharply black
against the swaying brightness of the water, and
we went aboard. She was a strange blend of ex-
pensive untidiness. Great pumps and hoses, costly
even when purchased second-hand, lay red and rusty
and slathered with dry mud, about her decks. We
descended a foul ladder through an iron scuttle
leading to the one great hold forward. The 'tween-
decks were workshops with lathes, drills, and savage-
looking torch-furnaces. Things that looked like
lawn mowers afflicted with elephantiasis revealed
themselves on inspection as submersible boring-
heads and cutters that went down into inaccessible
places, like marine ferrets, and did execution there.
In the centre, however, suspended from a beam, was
the great affair. It would be vain to describe the
indescribable. It resembled in a disturbing way a
giant spider with its legs curled semicircularly
about its body. A formidable domed thing with
circular glass eyes set in it and a door as of a safe or
the breech-block of a gun. From this protruded
a number of odd-looking mechanisms, and below
it, flanked by caterpillar belts, on which the contriv-
ance walked with dignity upon the bed of the ocean,
were large sharp-bladed cutters, Hke steel whorls.
While I gazed at this, endeavouring to decide how

196 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

much was reality and how much merely excited
imagination, Mr. Marks went down and proceeded
to set a ladder against the side of the machine. He
grasped wheels and levers, he spoke with vehemence
to Heatly, who ran to a switchboard and encased
his head in a kind of Hstening helmet. Then Mr.
Marks cHmbed nimbly through the aperture and
drew the door to with a click. A light appeared
within shining through the enormously thick glass and
reveahng a fantastic travesty of Mr. Marks moving
about in his steel prison. Captain Gosnell indicated
the triumphant perfection of this thing. They were
in constant telephonic connection with him. He
could direct a bright beam in any direction and he
could animate any one or all of the extraordinary,
limbs of the machine. Suppose a ship lay in sand,
shale, mud, or gravel. He could dig himself under
her, dragging a hawser which could be made fast
to a float on each side. He could fasten on to a
given portion of the hull, drill it, cut it, and in time
crawl inside on the caterpillar feet. He had food,
hot and cold drinks, and oxygen for two days. He
could sit and read if he liked or talk to the people
on the ship. And quite safe, no matter how deep.
Wonderful !

I dare say it was. It was a fabulous-looking
thing anyhow, and as Mr. Marks, moving like a
visible brain in a transparent skull, started and stop-
ped his alarming extremities, it struck me that human-

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 197

ity was in danger of transcending itself at last.
It was soothing to come up on deck again and see
Sant^ Angelo in the moonlight like the backcloth
of an Italian opera. It was a comfort to hear
that one of the men, who ought to have been on duty,
was drunk. Perhaps he had found the machinery
too pHDwerful for his poor weak human soul and had
fled ashore to drown the nightmare of mechanism
in liquor. One could imagine the men-at-arms,
whose duty it was to watch from those stone towers,
in ancient days, slipping out of some newly in-
vented corselet with a jangle and clang, and stealing
away in an old leather jerkin only half laced to make
a night of it.

Not that there was anything fundamentally
at odds with romance in this extraordinary adven-
ture into deep waters, I mused as I lay in my vast
chamber that night. Knights in armour, releasing vir-
gin forces of wealth buried in the ocean. Heatly was
moving about in the next room, smoking a cigarette.

"What does she do for a living?" I asked. He
came and stood in the doorway in his pajamas.
He blew a thread of tobacco from his Hps.

"She keeps a tea-shop near the Opera House,"
he said. "We don't go there; knowing her as we
do, it wouldn't be the right thing."

"But I can, I suppose," I suggested.

"Yes, you can, I suppose," he assented from,
somewhere within his room.

198 HARBOURS OF MJEMORY

"You don't object, of course?'' I went on.
The light went out.

And wedged in between Lanceolottis' music shop
and Marcu's emporium of Maltese bijouterie I
found a modest door and window. In the latter
was a simple card with the word TEAS in large
print. Below it was a samovar, and a couple of
table centres made of the local lace.

It was early afternoon and I was at liberty.
The gentleman who had been playing polo the day
before was to be seen at his office and he had been
good enough to inform me that the ship to which
I had been appointed would arrive from Odessa
in a few days' time. In the meanwhile I could walk
about and amuse myself. This was easy enough.
I walked up the Strada Mezzodi and found the
window with the card announcing teas. I walked
into a room, in which a mezzanine floor had been
constructed, with an iron spiral staircase in one corner.
The little boy with the gray eyes and the freckled
nose came clattering down the stairs and I also
observed that in the shadows behind the piled
pdttiserie the gray eyes of Bionda were upon me.

"Can I go upstairs?" I asked the boy and he
smiled and nodded with delightful friendliness.

"Then I will," I said, and he rushed up in front
of me. There was nobody there. He cleaned a

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 199

table by the low window. Across the street was
the broad and beautiful fa9ade of the Opera House.
The announcement board bore the legend : To-night
Faust.

**You want tea?" said the boy, with a forward
dart of his head, like an inquisitive bird. I nodded.

"Toast?" I nodded again.

"I thought you were at the hotel," I remarked.

"Only in the evenings," he explained, Hfting his
tray. "You want cakes, too?" I nodded again and
he seemed to approve of my catholic taste. A low
voice said, "Karl!" and he hurried down out of
sight.

I was sitting there munching a bun and enjoying
some really well-made tea (with lemon) and watch-
ing a number of cheerful, well-dressed people emerg-
ing from the theatre, when something caused me to
look round and I saw the face of Bionda just above
the floor. She was standing at a turn in the stair
regarding me attentively. I rose, and she came on up.

"I thought," she said without raising her eyes,
"that I had seen you before. Have you everything
you wish?"

"Everything except someone to talk to," I said,
and she raised her eyes with a serious expression in
them.

"I will talk if you wish," she said gravely.

"Do sit down," I begged. I wished to sit down
myself for the window was low. She complied.

200 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

**I am a friend of Mr. Heatly's," I went on. Her
face lighted up.

"He is a very nice man," she said, laughing. "He
likes me very much. He told me he was going to
look after me for the rest of my Hfe. He makes
me laugh very much. You like him?"

"I used to be on the same ship with him," I said.
"Years ago, before he was married."

"Ah, yes, before he was married. I see. Now
you go on a ship again ? "

"When she arrives from Odessa."

"From " she looked hard at me. "Perhaps

there will be news, if she comes from Odessa."

"Maybe." She sighed. "You have had no
news then, since the Revolution?" I asked.

"Nothing. Not one single word. In there, it is
all dark. When your ship comes, there will be
passengers, no?"

"Ah, I couldn't say," I repHed. "We must wait.
If there are any, I will let you know."

"Thank you." Her gaze wandered across the
street. "They have finished the play. What do
you call when they sing — before?"

"A rehearsal, you mean."

"Yes. Well, they have finished. There is Me-
phistopheles coming out now." She nodded toward
a tall gentleman in tweeds who was smoking a ciga-
rette and swinging a cane on the upper terrace. " He
waits for Margarita. There she is." A robust crea-

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 201

ture emerged, putting on long gloves, and the two
descended to the sidewalk. Bionda laughed.

**Does Margarita usually walk out with Me-
phisto?" I asked.

"Oh, they are married!" she informed me with a
whimsical grimace. "And very happy."

"What are you?" I demanded abruptly. "Not a
Slav, I am sure."

"Me? No. I am a Bohemian," she said.

"How appropriate! How exquisitely appropri-
ate!" I murmured.

"From Prag," she added, sighing a little.

"An enemy?" She nodded. "But if you will
only consider yourself Czecho-Slovak. . . ."I
suggested. She made a gesture of dissent and rose.

"Let me know when your ship comes in," she said,
and I promised. Three young naval lieutenants in
tennis undress came up the stairs and called for tea.
The little boy came up to take their order and I
paid him and went out.

Our intimacy increased, of course, as the days
passed, and I began to wonder whether or not I, too,
was about to pass under the spell and devote my
life to the amelioration of her destiny. If my ship
went back to Odessa I would be the bearer of mes-
sages, an agent of inquiry seeking news of a dim
concessionaire in the Siberian Urals. I made ex-
tensive promises, chiefly because I was pretty sure
my ship would probably go somewhere else, Bizerta

202 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

or Tunis. The simple sailor man in time develops a
species of simple cunning, to protect himself from
being too oppressively exploited. But it is prac-
tically impossible to rid a woman of the illusion that
she is imposing upon a man. Even Emma thought
it well to warn me of my danger. She had heard
rumours about that woman. Where had she got
the money to start her tea-shop, eh ? And when all
the officers had gone home, where would she get cus-
tomers .? And so on.

These questions did not preoccupy Bionda herself,
however. She was sad, but her sadness was the in-
evitable result of delightful memories. Her life
had been full and animated, and it was only natural,
since fate had left her stranded on a pleasant island,
that she should indulge her desire for retrospect
before rousing to do herself full justice in the new
environment. The possibility of regaining the wealth
that had been lost did not seem to interest her at all.
She never spoke of the expedition of Captain Gosnell
and his fellow adventurers. It seemed doubtful
at times whether she understood anything at all
about it. A shrug and she changed the subject.

And then one day I was stopped by two of the
Russian officers as they came down the hotel stairs
and they told me they had received their orders
at last. They were to report at Paris.

"We sail to-morrow for Marseilles," said one, and
his great spur jingled as he stamped his foot to settle

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 203

it in the high boot. He stared at me in a puzzled
way as though he were not quite sure I was to be
trusted with this information, and drew his handker-
chief from his sleeve. He had scarcely spoken to me
since we had met, and indeed his round head and
blank blue eyes had so worried me with the notion
that he was a Prussian that I had not regretted his
silence. He was rather a shy youth, however, and
my fancies were quite unfounded. With consider-
able difficulty he made known their hope that I
would give Madame any assistance in my power when
her other friends were gone. I agreed to this with
alacrity, since I myself would probably be a thousand
miles away in a few weeks' time. And the little boy,
Karl. Yes, I would look after him, too. He seemed
happy enough, learning the hotel business like a
good Bohemian. They shook hands solemnly. The
transport was signalled. They were to go on board
as soon as she docked.

I could see, what they did not seem so very con-
scious of, that the whole episode was going to blow
up on them. This is the great fact so passionately
denied by all romanticists — ^the mortality of an emo-
tion. And it was the Saturday night before my ship
arrived (she came in on Monday evening I remember)
that I joined Captain Gosnell and his lieutenants at
the Cafe de la Reine. They were exceedingly yet
decorously drunk. They sailed the next morning.
They had adjourned to a small ante-room of the

204 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

cafe and through a closed glass door an amused pub-
lic could obtain glimpses of the orgy. Captain
Gosnell's austere features had grown gradually
purple, and though he never became incoherent, nor
even noisy, it was obvious he had reached another
psychic plane. And so there may have been a signi-
ficance in the grandiose gesture with which he raised
a glass of champagne and murmured :

"To Her, whom we all adore, who awaits . . .
awaits our return. Our mascot. May she bring
us luck."

He sat down and looked in a puzzled way at the
empty glass. He gradually drank himself sober
and helped me to get the others into a cab. Mr.
Marks, his wig over one eye, snored. Heatly began
to sing in the clear night :

" Wide as the world is her Kingdom of power.'*

The cab started. Captain Gosnell waved a dig-
nified farewell. As they turned the corner I heard
the high windy voice still singing:

*'In every heart she hath jashioned her throne:
As Queen oj the Earth, she reigneth alone, . .

And then silence.

And next morning, after Early Mass, as we walked
slowly up the ramp and came to a pause on the
ramparts of the Lower Barracca, I was curious to

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 205

discover whether this departure of her champions
would make any authentic impression upon her
spirit. The sea lay in one immense sheet of placid
misty blue. Bells boomed from distant belfries and
there was a sudden snarl from a bugle down below.

"Suppose/' I was saying, "we had a message from
Odessa, that your husband had arrived? And sup-
pose he sent for you ? Or that he had reached Paris
and wanted you there?"

"Oh, yes, I should go, of course. It would be like
life again, after being dead."

It was almost as though a lamp had been lit
within her. She was transfigured. She smiled as a
goddess smiles when men immolate themselves be-
fore her. One would have imagined her words had
a literal meaning, that she had been dead, and that
the very thought which I had expressed was sufficient
to galvanize her into glorious life.

This gave me a good deal to think about, and I
looked down into the Grand Harbour where a small
squat ship with her decks muddy and disreputable
was pulling out into the fairway. Here was a fine
state of aff'airs! We were all ghosts to her, phan-
toms inhabiting another shadowy world cut off" from
life by an immense, pitiless blue sea. Compared
with that distant and possibly defunct concession-
aire in the Asiatic Urals, we were all impalpable
spectres! Our benevolence had about as much con-
scious significance for her as the sunlight upon a

2o6 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

plant. I did not speak again until the little steamer,
with a croak of her whistle, passed out between the
guns of the harbour-mouth and began slowly to recede
across the mighty blue floors, a great quantity of
foul smoke belching from her funnel and drifting
across the rocks. And then I mentioned casually
what was happening, that those men were bound
upon her affairs, seeking treasure at the bottom of
the sea, devoted to an extravagant quest.

And she made no reply. The steamer receded yet
farther. It became a black blob on the blue water, a
blob from which smoke issued, as though it were a
bomb which might explode suddenly with a tremen-
dous detonation, and leave no trace. But Bionda's
eyes were not fixed upon the steamer. She was gaz-
ing musingly upon the great cannon frowning down
from the farther fortress. And after a while she
sighed.

"Like life, after being dead," she murmured again.

It was as though she had forgotten us. She was
like a departed spirit discontented with the con-
veniences and society of paradise, who desires to
return but dreads the journey. And it became an
acute question, whether at any time she had achieved
any real grasp of her position. Had she ever reahzed
how she had inspired these men to unsuspected senti-
ments and released the streams of heroic energy
imprisoned in their hearts ^ Did she suspect even for
a moment how she had engaged their interest,

KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 207

monopolized their time, established herself in de-
fiance of all the rules of life in the midst of their alien
affection ? Did she know or care how they toiled and
suffered, and perhaps sinned, for her? Did she ever
imagine herself as she was, resting not upon the
inert earth, but reclining in comfort upon the taut
and anxious bodies of men ?

Or one may put the question this way — Does
any woman ?

SOME GOOD BUT INSUFFICIENT REASONS
FOR SILENCE

The writer of these notes is a Lieutenant of Reserve
in the Royal Navy (unless he has been recently de-
mobilized or dismissed for assailing the Admiralty
with gratuitous advice), on service in a vessel cruis-
ing along the gloomy and mysterious shores of
Anatolia; and it is therefore to be premised that
interruptions in the narrative are inevitable from
time to time. Indeed, it may very well happen that
this article will consist largely of interruptions con-
nected by conscientious attempts to do some "fine
writing." This by the way.

[At this point it was found necessary for the
writer of these notes to resume his duties as Chief
Engineer, orders having been received by wireless
to proceed to a prearranged island in the iEgean,
to meet His Majesty's battle cruiser Inevitable and
suckle her with oil-fuel. And while engaged upon
this desperate adventure, the writer's mind was led
away from the main argument and dwelt for a while
upon the probable impression conveyed to the aver-
age reader by the phrase "a Lieutenant of Reserve."
There is something sombre and forbidding in the very

208

REASONS FOR SILENCE 209

sound of it, so that one feels there must be tragedy
implied. One is reminded of Schomberg, the Ger-
man hotel-keeper in Conrad's *' Victory," who was
"supposed" to be "a Lieutenant of Reserve."
Conrad himself is ironically magnanimous. So he
may have been, he concedes in passing, and leaves
Schomberg to get what comfort and credit he can
out of his ambiguous status in the Imperial Service.
Personally, the writer imagines that Conrad may
have misunderstood Schomberg. Any one who has
had the melancholy experience of being a Lieu-
tenant of Reserve must entertain doubts whether
even a German hotel-keeper would want to brag
about it. However, the writer's conscience forbids
him to sail under false colours, and he toes the Hne
with Schomberg (who he believes was staying re-
cently at a hotel in Malta and posing as a Swiss
automobile salesman) and confesses himself a Lieu-
tenant of Reserve. He is in what is satirically
known as "the prime of Hfe," and while not bearing
any violent resentment toward the European War
which has had four very valuable years of that prime,
he sincerely hopes that some small portion of the
"freedom " which has been won will be granted to him
before old age sets in.]

While entering the lonely and land-locked harbour
of the tryst and making fast alongside the towering
structure of the Inevitable, it is impossible to refrain
from wondering what Ulysses would have to say

2IO HARBOURS OF MEMORY

about a war-galley of thirty thousand tons with
eleven hundred men on board. The notion — suppos-
ing his spirit to haunt the scenes of his exploits — is
not far-fetched. One cannot doubt that he used
this harbour during his operations against Troy.
His astute intelligence would appreciate the ad-
vantages of the treacherous shoal right under the
headland at the entrance, and we can imagine him
cursing the local Greeks for their frightful charges
and incredible stupidity.

[At this point the writer's attention is claimed
by the momentous information that the Inevitable
objects to our oil. Our Chief Officer, in overalls
and thick leather gauntlets, is being vituperated
by a total stranger, also in overalls and thick leather
gauntlets. Each of them waves festoons of litmus
paper, wherewith he has been testing the acidity of
the oil. What strikes one about the altercation
is the deep humanity of it. The stranger is obsessed
with a wild and romantic ideal, which is to have his
fuel-tanks perennially full of a miraculously perfect
oil. The Chief Officer is beset with a profound and
fanatical conviction that his tanks never contain
anything else save this same pellucid produce.
"Pride, human pride," one reflects, venturing near
the combatants and cautiously interpolating a few
words of compromise. Above, on the rail of the
Inevitable, on her dizzy bridges, looking out from
behind her mammoth guns, and even peering down

REASONS FOR SILENCE 211

from the Olympian heights of her tripod masts,
other human beings, full of pride and foolish mis-
conceptions, watch the affray. Near by, two or
three bluejackets, in blue overalls, wrestle with the
enormous hoses, and seem striving to assume the
pose of Laocoon and his sons, writhing in the grasp
of some horrible and interminable metallic serpent
of the sea. And this notion leads one to reconsider
the possibility of Ulysses affording any fresh insight
into his own mentality by his views concerning the
Inevitable. After all, the chances are that he would
merely take her as a matter of course and add her to
the long list of improbable monsters which, so he said,
he vanquished by his guile.]

It is time, however — and a lull in the activity fa-
vours the enterprise — to enlighten the reader con-
cerning some of the good but insufficient reasons for
silence. It would be a cruel thing to arouse curi-
osity only to evade satisfying it in a bold and manly
fashion — "after the way of the Enghsh, in straight-
flung words and few," as Kipling says. Those who
have heard an Englishman explaining anything
will recognize the likeness. Hearken, for instance,
to these two on the afterdeck. The fact is, the
writer, in addition to being a Lieutenant of Reserve
in the prime of life, is addicted to literature, and has
occasionally aggravated the offence by publishing
books. In this his experience and moraHty in no
way differs from that of thousands of other solvent

212 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

and likable men. But what has impressed him very
forcibly in contemplating his existence as seafarer
and author is, that in the very nature of things
he is deprived of the joys and amenities of the liter-
ary life, and has begun to doubt whether his labour
in that sphere is not mainly altruistic. Hence he is
moved to set down the various good but on the whole
insufficient reasons for going out of the writing busi-
ness altogether and resigning himself to a purely
local expression of opinion.

Take, for example, the question of applause.
Keats declared he wrote "for fame," and if we an-
alyze what Keats meant by fame we shall find that
it includes contemporary applause. But of what
use is applause to a man a thousand miles from
Washington Square or Chelsea Embankment or
Montmartre .f* The writer is not suggesting that an
author at home hears continually the thunder of pub-
lic approbation shaking his casements. His concep-
tion of how a literary man passes his time at home
is necessarily vague and touched with romance, but
it certainly includes a certain amount of social gam-
bolling among artistic persons, persons who can
tolerate the nuance and allusiveness so dear to
bookish folk.

He imagines himself, for example, the guest of the
evening at one of those old wainscoted and panelled
houses on Clapham Common (doubtless pulled down
long ago). There is a pleasant rustle of anticipation

REASONS FOR SILENCE 213

as he enters the room, and the women — most of the
party are women, and young — examine him with
eager deHght as he is presented. The young women,
he imagines, are clever as well as beautiful. They
"write a little," they are persuaded to confess, but
allow their admiration for his books to shine in their
eyes. Their conversation is only so-so perhaps, but
that is because they wish their guest to do himself
justice. The picture gets a little vague just here,
one must admit, because as a matter of fact the
writer is in the habit of smoking a particularly
strong brand of tobacco all the evening and he can
scarcely visualize those charming girls sitting in the
opaque fog which usually sets in about nine. . . .
The fact is, the writer is idealizing the memories
which have survived from what is tabulated in his
literary consciousness as his "Chelsea period." It
should be explained that in his pre-maritime days he
roomed with a Bohemian in a flat on Cheyne Walk
and became a hanger-on of the various cliques who
infested the neighbourhood at that time. It was in
the days when Whistler lived in an absurd house
with a polished copper door — a door past which the
writer saw him borne to his grave, followed by
a mob of well-dressed artists, who were all secretly
glad that the great man had passed away. He
remembers the tense atmosphere in the church,
strangely compounded of ecclesiasticism and wordly
ambition, the staccato whisper of the lady -reporter —

214 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

"What name please?" — and her venomous look
when he murmured absently, **Pintuncchio". . . .
However, it was a failure. The cliques of Chelsea
were not to be deceived. A mechanical draftsman
from the city, a youth who was neither rich, clever,
nor good-looking, was destined to remain outside the
magic circle of the Chelsea geniuses.

Yet he gained an occasional glimpse into their
mysteries. In the cant phrase of the cliques he
"met" So-and-So and Thingumbob and Toodleoo
and Rumty-tum. He narrowed his resources to
acquire the evening dress suit and planished shirt
front — the suit which long since passed into the
hands of a Shaftesbury Avenue dealer in old clothes,
and which will never be replaced. He "met" these
people and came to various damaging conclusions
concerning them. But this did not hinder him from
realizing that, if he could only get inside, he would
have a very pleasant time. He would take Hterary
ladies home in cabs and dazzle them with his scintil-
lating wit and satire. He would be the life of the
studio parties which were attended mostly by hum-
bugs who could not paint. He would be pointed out,
as he hurried along Cheyne Walk, to Americans from

Memphis, Tennessee. He would but this sort of

thing tends to futility. It was a failure. In spite
of his art-green wall paper and Liberty curtains; in
spite of his Botticelli prints and poems on "The
River at Dusk," and so forth, it was borne in upon

REASONS FOR SILENCE 215

him that not only did the cognoscenti dislike him, but
he disliked them. The impression he gathered from
successful artists and authors was that their pasts
were shameful and they had no desire to speak of
them; while the young and obscure did not seem to
be getting anywhere at all. . . .

Certainly the writer himself was not getting any-
where except into debt. The promised reactions
did not come. Useless to acquire a mass of technical
jargon from painters and still remain a mechanical
draftsman in the city. Futile to haunt studios
for literary conversation when each new acquaint-
ance seemed more stupid and suspicious than the
last. The pervasive drawl of the Oxford -gone-
wrong parasites — "Awfully clever chap; have you
met him.?" — became a nightmare. And having col-
lected some poems, the writer cast about for an
editor.

Now it was a notable characteristic of Chelsea
society in those days that it was, as it were, sus-
pended in mid-air, like Mahomet's rock. It had no
visible means of support. It was artistic, but nobody
seemed to earn his living by art. It was suavely
democratic, without the slightest contact with the
democracy. It is the writer's opinion that the
democracy, had it become aware of the existence of
Chelsea society, would have battered down the
aesthetic doors and put every artist and parasite to
the sword. Of course many innocents, like the

2i6 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

writer, would have been slaughtered, but the effect
upon England would have been distinctly invigorat-
ing.

By suavely democratic the writer implies that
these people affected an indifference to "mere
wealth/' A woman who had an income of ten
thousand pounds a year from a Bavarian brewery
asked the writer to join her in her morning ride in
the Park at — oh, quite early, say ten-thirty . . .
A breezy creature in Donegal tweeds said he was
making up a party to tour the Hungarian Alps —
would the writer come? And a man in a pince-nez
talked of pubHshing as though the thing were done
every day. "Why don't you pubHsh? Fll intro-
duce you to let me see now . . ." (The writer

trembled with a fearful joy. Here was the open
door at last!) "Oh, Til give you a card to Tyne-
mouth Banks. He's just taken over the Academic
Review, Accept .f* My experience of Tynemouth
Banks is that he'll accept anything. Prices? Oh,
a guinea . . ."

[An interruption in the form of a tremendous
shock causes the writer at this juncture to abandon
his reveries of literary adventures and run up the
ward-room companion. The Inevitable has moved
away. A gigantic submarine, like some fabled
monster of the deep, is manoeuvring alongside and
one of her diving planes has ripped a hole in our
quarter very much as a pair of scissors cuts a gash in

REASONS FOR SILENCE 217

brown paper. The excitement is acute. The Chief
Officer, accompanied by his men, seems to be en-
gaged in some intricate caHsthenic exercises. The
submarine remains calm. Her twelve-inch gun
droops, and seems to be regarding us with moody
suspicion. It transpires that she wants a hundred
tons of oil and wants it quick. Her commander
receives with apathy the news that water is coming
into our after cofFer-dam. All hands proceed to
the work of salvage. Wood is sawn, nails are
produced, cement is mixed, shores are prepared, and
a box filled with concrete heaved up and forced
against the torn plates. The inspiration passes
and all subside into a sullen, hard-breathing silence.
The sea is an inhuman thing.]

The writer knew nothing about the Academic
Review, as he chooses to call it. It cost sixpence, and
he could not afford sixpences in those days. More-
over, it was one of those journals which for years had
been the sport of wealthy amateurs who knew very
little about journalism and nothing at all about
literature. At this time a sporting peer had bought
it and installed Tynemouth Banks in the editorial
chair. Tynemouth Banks was reputed to be an
expert editor. In the British Museum Library he
was announced as the author of "Highways and
Byways in the Frisian Islands," a handbook for
tourists. The new offices of the Academic Review
were in Serjeants' Inn, between Clifford's Inn and

2i8 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

Chancery Lane. A young lady with many bangles
(bangles were jingling everywhere in those days) took
the two cards which the writer offered, but said Mr.
Tynemouth Banks was out. As he wandered
through Clifford's Inn, where he afterward had
chambers and wrote half of a long novel, the writer
began to wonder whether the doors were open to
him after all. A few days later, when an invitation
to call at Tynemouth Banks's private residence in
Onslow Gardens came to the flat in Cheyne Walk, he
still wondered. Some faint premonition warned
him that this was not the way. Nevertheless, the
dress suit came out and he made his way to Onslow
Gardens, a high range of heartless houses near
Madame Tussaud's Chamber of Horrors.

It is only honest to confess that this was almost the
only occasion on which the writer had met an editor.
Editors were to him a mythical race. And the ad-
venture seems so improbable now that he often
wonders whether the whole thing is not a dream.
Tynemouth Banks turned out to be a sleek, beady-
eyed, black-mustached little creature, wearing valu-
able rings and a black opal stud. Two stockbrokers
and a short-haired woman in an Empire gown were
drinking whisky in the biUiard room. One of the
stockbrokers told a story about a young woman
who ... a story the writer had heard in the
machine shop six years before. There was a yell of
laughter

REJSONS FOR SILENCE 219

"Published anything yet?" asked the editor of the
Academic Review as they went upstairs.

It might be supposed that the writer, after such an
experience, might have lost his illusions as to the
idyllic nature of the literary life ashore. But il-
lusions about shore life die hard at sea. It seems
unreasonable to forego the simple delights of author-
ship: the tea-table tattle about So-and-So's prices
and Thingumbob's last book, how Miss Boodle was
determined to marry the author of **The Misogy-
nist" and succeeded — and has twins . . . Hard
to do without proofs. When the proofs of the
writer's first book were ready, he was repairing a
broken condenser in the gasping heat of Singapore in
July. On the next occasion he was cooling bananas
in Costa Rica. Proofs found him again in a creek of
the Niger River. Proofs are stubborn things. If
any author wishes to know how stubborn, let him
come up from below, where it is a hundred and
thirty Fahrenheit, to his room where it is apparently
a hundred and eighty, his finger-nails broken and
destroyed with oil, his heart full of care and the pe-
culiar bitterness which sea Hfe engenders — and find
his proofs on the bunk.

George Moore, in one of his interminable auto-
biographies, says, "Proofs always inspire me."
Probably they do — in an exquisite apartment fur-
nished with beautiful books and pictures, the plate-
glass windows throttling the roar of West London

220 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

down to a far-ofF murmur. It is the failure to attain
to these fehcities that has raised doubts in the writer's
mind whether, after all, it is worth while. . . .
Editors have become a myth. An uneasy feehng is
born in the writer's bosom that he himself is be-
coming a myth. Such things can happen. He is
reminded of an extraordinary case of a human being,
a warm, friendly, seafaring creature, becoming

suddenly transformed into a

[At this juncture the writer, propped up in his
bed-place and becoming at last genuinely interested
in the recital of his private griefs, is informed by his
Commanding Officer that the ship is to proceed at full
speed to Lesbos. A Muscovite destroyer, the
TurguenieJ, abandoned by the Bolsheviki and
salved by the AUies, has broken her tow-rope and is
drifting ashore. Immediate assistance is required.
Pensively wondering how long this sort of thing is to
go on, and recalling an incident in European history
known as the Hundred Years' War, the writer gives
the necessary orders and paces the after-deck as the
ship drives into the sharp teeth of a typical ^gean
gale. Experience of these swift, meteorological
tantrums inspires respect for the seamanship of the
ancients, who careered round among these islands in
what were little more than canoes. The Lesbian
Isle! The Commanding Officer, who has never
heard of Sappho save in Daudet's novel of that
name, alludes to a certain amount of kudos which

REASONS FOR SILENCE 221

may be extracted from the venture — if she can be
got off. Sappho? No, the destroyer. No doubt
the Admiralty will cough up something . . . the
wind blows his words away. Something? Well . .
substantial. Eh ? The wireless boy, a rangy youth
with romantic eyes, rustles along the deck like a
leaf and hands the Captain a signal pad. . . .
** Turgueniej ashore, total loss, return. . . ."]

Yes, an extraordinary case. Before metempsy-
chosis set in he was the Navigating Lieutenant of
the writer's last ship, a seaplane carrier. He might
be described as an embittered idealist, not quite
seeing what he had gotten out of his twenty-five
years' faithful service; not seeing, either, the aston-
ishing destiny just ahead of him. . . . Had he
no premonition, that evening when he strolled into
the empty ward room, where the writer was sitting
with his novel half written before him? It was
very quiet. The pilots and observers, noisy chil-
dren, were ashore skylarking. The Paymaster sat
in his room reading his only book: Dean Ram-
say's "Scottish Life and Character." His chuckle,
as he perceived some aged joke, synchronized with
the faint rhythm of the dynamo two flats be-
low.

The writer had seized the opportunity to bring
out his manuscript, as a rat brings out a bit of
cheese-rind and gnaws it on the hearth-rug when folks
are away. Now and again a destroyer, slipping out

222 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

of harbour in the darkness, would give a short sharp
"whup-whupT' on her siren, Hke a terrier's bark.
The wine-steward's shadow remained motionless in
his small bar in the passage beyond the open door, a
curved silhouette bent over a tattered and coverless
copy of Elinor Glyn's "Three Weeks." The framed
portrait of King George over the sideboard vibrated
so that His Majesty appeared to be convulsed with
sudden laughter, as the other door opened and the
Navigating Officer entered and advanced to his
appointed place in the adventure. A tall, stout,
erect figure of a man, with a sharp, weather-beaten
visage. His movements had the precise deliberation
of those accustomed to command. Command!
Thereby hangs the tale.

For the novel which lay in a flurry of white sheets
upon the dark green of the ward-room table was
entitled "Command: A Study in Patriotism." The
writer had been preoccupied for some time with the
psychology of command. He had suffered much
during his years at sea from the idiosyncrasies of
commanders. In the idle moments of busy years a
tale of a man who aspired to command, who ap-
peared unable to convince others of his fitness, and
who had wandered into forlorn byways of sensuality
made its appearance upon many sheets of paper.
Secretly, of course, as becomes a good deed. And
it was without any suspicion of its real nature that
the Navigating Officer sat down, lit a cigarette, rang

REASONS FOR SILENCE 223

the bell for the bartender, and drew the manuscript
toward him.

And for a long time he neither spoke nor moved,
save to reach his hand absently toward ash-tray or
glass of chartreuse — an alert, immobile, enigmatic
figure. He read on, page after page. The writer
wrote on, page after page. Some people have this
mysterious gift — one can write in their presence.
But of course a man can read faster than any one
can write except perhaps the far-famed Trollope,
with his completed page every quarter of an hour, or
Arnold Bennett, or .... no matter. The
Navigating Officer finished chapter four, pushed
the thing away, and rose. He began pacing up and
down, one hand in his trousers pocket. It was at
this point that the writer noticed a change. It
became obvious that his brother officer was labouring
under some strong excitement, as though he had
absorbed a potion into his system and it was begin-
ning to work. His pace quickened, slackened,
halted. He held up his left hand and examined the
nails narrowly, as though already suspecting some
modification of his personality. And then he
spoke. He said he couldn't understand how the
writer had learned so much about a shipmate's
private life. This was denied. The characters in
"Command" were imaginary. They had been
slowly and painfully evolved . . .

"But dammit, this chap who comes home from

224 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

the China coast, who had a girl out there and who
gets engaged at home to a dark girl — why see here,
even his bank's the same as mine — ^Anglo-Celestial.
Dammit, it is me you're writing about! It's my

ideas. Here, where he says where is it?" He

ruffled the sheets. "Where he tells the old man —
you know. Well, the very words I used once. And
what gets me is how you found out about the girl in
England — the one he's engaged to — having a foreign
strain in her. I tell you it's me. It's marvellous.
Well, I suppose I must have let it out when I was
stewed. Rather shirty trick that, what?"

Now what interested the writer in this harangue
was not the accusations — entirely unfounded —
levelled at him for betraying vinous confidences, but
the obvious fact that his brother officer was fascin-
ated by seeing himself in the character in the book.
Of course he was not very much like this character,
save in externals. He had been captured by the
externals, not being a literary man. He began to
brood upon his image reflected in the story. He
would make inquiries as to the probable course of
events. He indulged in retrospect and would allude
to his past life in the Orient. By degrees those
traits in which he differed from the chief character
in the novel receded. He was ceasing to be a human
being and becoming a character in fiction! He
cultivated a grievance until the shadow obscured
him. Now and again he would emerge to make some

REASONS FOR SILENCE 225

observation as to what *'a girl would do'* in certain
circumstances, meaning of course the girl in the story.
He was very anxious to know whether they married
eventually, but as this was not known to anybody
he retired unsatisfied. By degrees his personality
faded, and the writer waS not surprised one day to
be told that he had gone. "Gone home on leave"
was the official explanation, but the writer knows bet-
ter. He has searched the Navy List, but the Navi-
gating Officer is gone from the Navy List, if he was
ever there. He has become a myth, a memory of a
quiet evening, white sheets on a green cloth, green
chartreuse . . . King George convulsed with
sudden laughter as the door opens and a character
walks in . . .

[At this point the Third Officer (who attends to
the mails) looks into the writer's cabin, holding back
the curtain, and remarks, "I shall be sealing up the
bag in a few minutes. Chief. Have you anything
to go?"]

THE IDEA

Dinner was over, and little glasses of red and green
liqueurs were being carefully transposed by the stew-
ards as they withdrew the cloth. Most of us were
smoking, and a game of chess was beginning at the
foot of the table. The gramophone was rendering an
Irish jig, and the Chief Engineer, from Londonderry,
was incommoding the wardroom servants in front
of the sideboard with a fas seul of his own invention.
It was a typical scene. Half a dozen men were laugh-
ing and talking together at the top of the table, when
someone suddenly remarked :

"Oh, I don't think there's much in it, you know,
if you only get a good idea."

I looked at the speaker, a young seaplane observer,
known chiefly to me as a devoted reader of poetry. I
found, to my surprise, that they were talking of liter-
ature. Some friend at home had "made a hit"
with a story, I gathered, and the talk had focussed
upon the fascinating subject of an idea.

"I have read somewhere," remarked the surgeon,
filling his pipe, "that there are only nine original
ideas for a story in the world, and they were all
discovered ages ago by the Chinese."

226

THE IDEA 227

"You mean the nine Muses," murmured the FHght
Commander.

"Oh no," said the Surgeon, "I mean what I say —
nine ideas. I forget what they are, but the argu-
ment of the writer was that all plots fall into these
nine categories. You can't get away from the nine
original ideas."

"Like a cat with her nine lives," suggested the
Flight Commander. "No wonder magazine stories
are piffle."

"I have an aunt who lives at Nine Elms," inter-
jected the junior watchkeeper, and was suppressed.

"I don't think you've got it right. Doc," I re-
marked, moving nearer. "The actual number of
ideas is, in my opinion, immaterial. Even granting
only nine original plots, the combinations of nine
numbers are infinite, I am given to understand by
the mathematicians. Facts prove that it is so.
I myself have known men who had ideas to burn,
as they say."

"That's all my ideas are fit for . . . to
burn," muttered the Surgeon.

"I am convinced," I went on, "that in the matter
of ideas he who meditates is lost. I used to know
a man who spent his Hfe hunting for ideas." The
young seaplane observer was watching me, and I
preserved an aspect of bland abstraction. Without
betraying any confidences, I was aware that he had
secret ambitions toward literature.

228 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

**This man," I resumed, "had been for many
years librarian at a college in London where I was a
student. His knowledge of literature was as com-
prehensive as mine was sketchy. He had been at a
German university and was familiar not only with
books, but with the art and music of western Europe.
He had written a short play, on some historical
subject, which had had a short run in London years
before I met him. Of course he was much older
than I, but we had in common a leaning toward a
Bohemian existence, which ultimately took the
form of a flat in Chelsea, in the days when artists
and authors lived along Cheyne Walk, and there
was a sort of Latin Quarter to be found there.

"I had a job in an office in the city, and he, of
course, had to be at the college till nine or ten
o'clock at night. We used to go to a tavern in
Knightsbridge and stay till midnight, when we would
walk down Sloane Street and along the river-front
to our flat, where the housekeeper had left a cold
supper spread in our room overlooking the Thames.
And all the time we alked. Whether it was brilHant
talk or not, I am not prepared to say. The point
is that this man, with whom I spent a great portion
of my time, was consumed with a preposterous
craving to discover what he defined as *an idea for a
play.' His puny little success with a one-act curtain
raiser had thrown him sHghtly out of centre and he
had been wabbHng ever since. And the curious

THE IDEA 229

thing about him was that this obsession kept com-
pany in his mind with the perfectly irreconcilable
conviction that 'everything had been done/

"He was an accompHshed improvisator on the
piano, and on fine summer evenings our open win-
dow on Cheyne Walk would be cluttered with quite a
little crowd of home-going sweethearts and so
forth, Hstening to him as he played in the darkness.
But when I would say: *Why not write it down?'
he would make a gesture of negation and answer
that it was no use; everything had been done. He
would watch me scribbling away on Sundays, and
assure me that it was all futile — everything had
been done. Of course this was in his pessimistic
periods. At other times he would rouse up and
discuss the possibility of hitting upon 'an idea.'

"He had what I call a typical misconception of
the very nature of literature. He seemed to im-
agine that ideas were hke nuggets of gold which
any one might stumble upon at any moment. He
was preoccupied with the notion of wealth to be
obtained from the idea. With all his vast knowledge
of books this man was for ever looking at literature
through the wrong end of the telescope. He would
turn over the most imbecile suggestions for books;
for instance — a novel in which all the characters
were wicked, or a novel in which all the characters
were good and came to a bad end. His desire, you
see, was not to evolve something out of himself, but

230 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

to do something superficially different from some
well-known success. To write because he had to, be-
cause he would enjoy doing it, never entered his
head.

** Don't imagine that he was a fool. On the
contrary he had an instinct for the genuine which
was unerring up to the middle of the nineteenth
century. Here he lost himself and got involved in
all sorts of mazes. And it was this sudden failure of
his critical insight to cope with his contemporaries
which led me one day to compare a man's intellectual
life with a projectile fired from a gun. Each follows
a hyperbolic curve which reaches its maximum height
at a certain period and then begins to decline. Some
never reach the point where the man himself is
standing. Some are still flying ahead and are not
understood by us. Of course, I added, I spoke in
hyperbole. He was a man of nervous and discon-
certing movements, gray but not old, and his pale
eyes had the peculiar glaze of the idealist who is also a
failure. He made a quick gesture and rapidly
exclaimed :

"'That's an idea! That's an idea! Now how
can we work that out.?' and he fell into a reverie
which lasted till the saloon closed.

"It was the same when I told him that in a story
I was writing a miser made the discovery that he
could get his money back in the next world if his
heirs squandered it in this. "Now there's an ideal"

THE IDEA 23 r

he burst out, and began walking to and fro with his
eternal cigarette. *If I could only get an idea/
he would mutter. * Something really original . . .
there's a fortune in it.' He would bump into an
idea and remain unaware of its proximity. I
remember when he came down to join me in Chelsea,
he was very much upset. He had been two years in
lodgings in Bayswater, kept by a middle-aged
widow, when suddenly she had come up to his room
*just as he was thinking out an idea for a play'
and asked him to marry her. He was in a terrible
state. He packed his portmanteaus and trunk,
took a four-wheeler, and came down at once to me.
He had never heard of such a thing in his life, he
assured me! He had never done or said anything
that any one could construe into an advance. It
took him weeks to get over the shock and return
to his hunt for an idea.

"He was like a traveller through a rich and pleas-
ant land who is under the illusion of being in a barren
desert. That is the point I want you to notice, for
this friend of mine was typical of that period of
thought in Bohemian London. Oh dear no, he
wasn't the only one by any means. I daresay
there were thousands of well-meaning and cultured
ladies and gentlemen in London in those days who
were afflicted with the same peculiar perversion of
vision. They were responsible for the notion spread-
ing through schools and colleges, suburbs and country

232 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

towns, that an idea is a nugget of gold to be suddenly
ifound in a heap of dirt. Now if you will permit
vme to say so, you are quite wrong. My friend was
^rong. I don't wish to convey the impression
that I was a sort of youthful Socrates who amused
himself by studying the habits of an elderly failure.
But I never could satisfy myself that his mania
for an * idea' or an 'original plot' was the right
^way to go about."

''^Then how do you propose to go about .? " inquired
tlie Surgeon.

"Well, we'll come to that presently. What I
was going to say was this. If we go back a little
way in the history of story-writing, we shall find that,
following on the unique success of Dickens as a
serialist, a number of other men achieved a somewhat
similar success without the greatness. That is to
say, these men followed what they conceived to be
Dickens's method. They planned interminable ser-
ials with a central mystery which remained undi-
vulged until the end, and was supposed to keep the
reader's tongue hanging out with anxiety. But
as a matter of fact the anxiety was more the author's
than the reader's, for the former was often driven to
the craziest shifts to maintain the agony and ex-
tricate himself from the difficulties in which he
found himself. As Oscar Wilde shrewdly and wittily
remarked of these writers, 'the suspense of he
author becomes unbearable.' Now, while it is

THE IDEA 233

true that Dickens usually had a few mysteries
in his novels, mysteries which somehow seem
strangely unnecessary and clumsy to us to-day,
his success was in spite of, not because of them.
His followers could not see that, and spent their
lives devising problems which, to quote Wilde
again, were not worth solving.

"If that were all, the evil would have died with
them. Unfortunately some of these men became
editors, and the evil that editors do Hves after them,
as well as the good. As editors these authors
established a mandarinic control over the young
men who were beginning to write. It gradually
became impossible to sell a manuscript which did
not conform to their conception of a story. Not
only was the number of words fixed, but the whole
business was reduced to a few rules. Every story
had to have a 'plot.' By plot was understood either
a love story, a ghost story, or a murder story. The
story par excellence was one which combined all
three. I am speaking now of the 'eighties and
early 'nineties. If you want to know how they
succeeded, turn over the old magazines in a second-
hand bookstore and try to read the stories. You
will discover, to your astonishment, many men who
have since made their mark as originals, laboriously
fitting together the sorriest hack-stufF at the com-
mand of some editor who had become famous in
the same line. By virtue of their own genius they

234 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

have escaped; but they are only a few out of the
scores who Hved and died in the grip of that highly
organized convention.

"And the strange and terrible thing about it all
was that every book produced at that time which is
still alive broke every rule that the mandarins
had made. Even that last infirmity of ignoble
minds — the happy ending — was flouted on occasion.
But I am not concerned either with the men who
broke down the walls of this penitentiary, or with
the men who saw their chance and followed out
through the gap into freedom. What I want you
to remember is that the great majority believed
that story-writing did go by rule, that you could
learn to do it just as you learned to play the piano
or ride a bicycle. They paid for their belief with
their lives, some of them. They lived in garrets and
wrote stories of beautiful young ladies of high degree
in love with diplomatists and landowners. They
burst their poor heads looking for ^plots' and 'ideas.'
They planned happy endings while their own hearts
were breaking with failure. And it was all so
futile, so stupidly wrong. The whole trouble lay
in the fact that they were trying to write without
in the first place getting any knowledge of life.
They were so preoccupied with the technical details
of a senseless conventionalism that they never be-
came aware of the life around them. Do you re-
member the plaintive cry of one of them — *I

THE IDEA 235

could be a great poet if I only knew the names of
things'!

"The man I have been telling you about was like
that. New ideas were exploding all round him,
and all he could do was to shrink into himself and
mutter that 'everything had been done. All the
ideas had been used.' It never entered his head to
take hold and write about the first thing that came
to hand, to go on writing. It never struck him
that an idea was a Hving thing, which grows and
develops and ultimately brings forth other ideas.
He couldn't see that. I have often thought of the
last time I ever saw him, early in the war. We
had been to the terminal to get my baggage, for
I was to spend the night at his place. He was
talking of an idea he had for writing a series of
articles on the dramatists of the seventeenth century.
I applauded the notion, for he really knew more
about the seventeenth century than he did about the
twentieth. But imagine it! Conceive the mental-
ity of a man who proposed such a thing, with Ant-
werp falling, with a British Fleet destroyed off
Coronel, with every heart in England on fire in a
gigantic struggle with the powers of darkness!
Nevertheless I applauded the notion, for he desired
greatly to earn a few guineas. And as we came
out of the terminal station into Liverpool Street,
and he was complaining of the difficulty in getting
a central idea for each essay, it seemed as if the whole

236 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

world dissolved in a series of explosions. There
was a sheet of green flame in front of us and the
sound as of every window in London falling in shivers.
We darted into the station and waited for death.
It seemed impossible that we could escape. My
friend collapsed into a fit of ague. Bomb after
bomb fell and burst with its tremendous detonation
and he sat there on my grip and muttered, *My
God ! My God !' The mothers with children and
the men who had collected with us on that stone
stairway, looked curiously at him as he sat shudder-
ing. I don't think he ever recovered from that little
adventure. The twentieth century was too much
for him. I often think of him, now that he is gone,
wandering in the shades in his fruitless search for
an idea. Or perhaps he has found one, and is
spending eternity working it out ! "

**Well," said the Surgeon, ringing the bell for the
bartender, **that doesn't seem to get us any nearer
to the solution. You don't propose that a man
should die or commit suicide in order to get an
original idea for a story, do you?"

"Not at all. My point is that a young man must
let his ideas grow, and not be continually rooting
them up to see how they are getting on. The broad
difference between us and the old convention aHsts
is this — ^that while they constructed what they called
a plot, something like a Chinese puzzle, and fitted
their highly conventional characters into it, we pre-

THE IDEA 237

fer to conceive one or more characters evolved out of
our own souls by their impact upon others, and leave
these characters to fashion the story in their own
way. Just as the realists who followed them were
not real, so the romanticists themselves were not
really romantic. The very essence of a romance is
its fortuitousness, if I may say so. It may be suc-
cinct or it may be rambling. It may have the clear-
cut beauty of a jewel or the shadowy elusiveness of
a dream. It will depend for its authenticity upon
the genuine quality of your mood. But in nine
cases out of ten the idea, as you call it, is not clearly
apparent to the author himself until he has gone too
far to go back. He sees it in a glass darkly and then,
perhaps, face to face."

"What'll you have?" asked the surgeon.

LOST ADVENTURES

It is a harmless diversion of authors to express a
weakness for various methods of beginning a story.
Very few eminent authors seem able to resist the
distant horseman of G. P. R. James's novels, who
might have been seen as the shades of night were
falling. Blessed with perfect faith and eyesight
one may agree. Others like what used to be called
a Proem, a sort of literary shock absorber, a kind
of intermediate chamber where one is accustomed
to a change of atmosphere before being transferred
to the full pressure of the story. It was a fav-
ourite device of novelists when I was a youngster,
and I regarded their Proems with aversion because
they had no ascertainable connection with the story.
Others are drawn toward the letter form, the first
chapter, or perhaps introduction, ushering the reader
into the very innermost shrines of intimacy. Others
again like to go head-foremost into the very thick of
the action. Authors who do this are practical. They
"get" the reader with a short scene of gun play in a
Western camp and tell him what the trouble was
afterward. Shrewd fellows they are!

But personally the one story I cannot resist is the

238

LOST ADVENTURES 239

story whose first chapter begins with a birth. "David
Copperfield" is for me the great book of my Hfe. It
begins on Page One with the simple and majestic
declaration,

"I Am Born"
and I began to read it not very long after I had been
born myself. Being born, at the time when that
fat and fascinating volume first came into the nurs-
ery, was about the only thing I had accomplished
without mishap. I said to myself "I, too, have been
born" and lay flat on my stomach on the hearthrug
to pursue the tale anew. There is nothing like a
start, and being born, however pessimistic one may
become in later years, is undeniably a start. And
I defy any one to resist the attractive possibilities of
a being who has achieved the momentous feat of get-
ting himself born.

But as time went on and I read "David Copper-
field" so many times that whole episodes are graven
verbatim on my memory, I began to discover a num-
ber of startling divergences between David's conven-
tional arrival in England and my own. David, it
seemed, was a posthumous child, a hard word which
gave me a lot of trouble in the beginning. Inquiry
revealed the agreeable fact that I was not posthu-
mous. No one will ever fathom the extraordinary con-
crete images evoked in a child's mind by elusive
abstractions. For some reason the word posthumous
called up ideas of strange convoluted things seen in

240 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

Dore's illustrations of Dante's Inferno. Further
investigations carried on in the family circle elicited
the fact that I myself was an exasperating child and
a fit candidate for that grim neighbourhood. I was
also a child afflicted with innumerable privileges no
other child had, none of which seemed to do me any
good. Like most English children of the 'eighties
I became reconciled to the fact that I was a bad lot
and only some special intervention would save me
from an alarming end.

But at that time I was only remotely interested
in ends. It was beginnings which preoccupied the
infant imagination. In due course it was possible
to visualize the differences between Copperfield's
beginnings and my own. Copperfield, after getting
born in a house in Suffolk, achieved felicity by going
to live in a ship. I, on the contrary, had come out
of a ship to live in a house. This seemed to me hard
luck. I seemed to have had all sorts of thrilling
experiences when I was too young to appreciate them.
I brooded on this for a good while. I tried to recall
the irrevocable. In a previous state of existence I
had been rocked in the cradle of the deep, I had
weathered storms and seen strange lands from under
the arched white sails of ships. I had lain in dark-
ness while the feet of men had stamped on the deck
overhead and their hoarse calls had come faintly
through the roaring of the winds and the thunder of
beam seas. There had been mutinies and madness,

LOST ADVENTURES 241

short rations and stern measures, and I had remained
oblivious to it all. It is not too much to say, pro-
vided the reader will not misconstrue the remark,
that at times I wished I had never been born!

These, however, were passing moods. There
were compensations, of which in time I availed my-
self. The house might not be a ship but it was filled
with pictures of ships, with talk of ships, and oc-
casionally with the captains of ships. They would
come home with my father as evening fell, these
gray-whiskered ship-masters, and the dining room
would fill with a blue fog as they drank brandy and
water and smoked their pipes and discussed the one
subject in which they were interested — ships. In
this nautical atmosphere I passed my time, merely
emerging for a few hours each day to go to a school
where no one knew anything about ships. Indeed
the ignorance of the boys and masters was, for a
maritime nation, remarkable. For them a ship was
a ship — they knew no distinction between a bark,
a schooner, a brig, or a square-rigger. They were
unable to define the functions of a spankerboom,
a cat-head, or a jimmy-green. At home these things
were household words. Punishment was described
as a **dose of manila" or "the rope's end."

On the walls were oil paintings of ships in full sail,
in perilous proximity to ugly headlands or in the
act of running down innocent Oriental craft. Dusky
photographs, enlarged from daguerreotypes, re-

242 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

vealed ancient caracks about to be launched or ca-
reened for scaling, like prehistoric monsters reclining
amid a forest of bare poles festooned with insecure
ladders like gigantic climbing plants. And then
when I had attained the age of six, he for his last
and I for my first conscious voyage, my father and
I went to sea.

Even then the age of sail was on the point of van-
ishing. The sea captains who had filled our dining
room with smoke had all **gone into steam." And
it was on an old tramp steamer out of Rotterdam
that I began going to sea and writing about it at the
same time.

The imaginative memory, however, is an incal-
culable thing. That voyage was notable more for
encountering a rich collection of human curios — ship-
masters, mates, engineers, and ship chandlers in Car-
diff. Nautical impressions seem to have had their gen-
esis in a little smoky cubby-hole of an office in London
which my father rented in an immense block of
buildings called Number Twenty-Seven Leadenhall
Street, on the site of the present Baltic Exchange.
Up to this shrine we used to go, my tall old father
and I, several times a week, and there I would spend
the day. It is a perplexing problem to decide just
why he took me, for he invariably behaved as though
he were trying to lose me. I would be left in ex-
tremely trying situations. More than once he forgot
me at the tavern where he ate a "two shilling or-

LOST ADVENTURES 243

dinary," left me wedged in between a couple of plump
underwriters and unable to get out of the box to fol-
low him. Sometimes I would be stranded high and
dry on the stool of a neighbour's office, whence I
could not get down without disaster. And once he
started home without me, while I sat abandoned to
the three daughters of the house in the old Anchor
Hotel in the Minories, three fresh-complexioned and
well-meaning young persons who read to me the sav-
age old English fairy stories and frightened me into
a hysterical storm of tears.

My great friend in these tribulations was the office-
boy. He was a youth of singular accomplishments,
all of which he would exercise for my dehght. He
lived in a dungeon containing a safe and a letter
press, and with a number of hull models on the walls,
ornaments which impressed me unfavourably by
reason of their incomplete condition and utter un-
suitability for sailing in a pond. My friend the of-
fice-boy, however, made me forget these things in his
company. He had a jew's-harp, upon which he
played ravishing tunes while I sat on the desk and
inclined my ear to his shoulder. He gave me a
whistle with which I caused a scandal in the train go-
ing home. Sometimes, having business down at the
docks, he would take me with him, and I would be
transported to an Elysium of loud noises, deHcious
odours, and a great turmoil of labour. I would be
taken on board great ships and left to prowl about

244 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

cabins and alley-ways. What pilgrimages ensued
along those alley-ways, whose mysterious teak doors
and swaying curtains would suddenly reveal new and
astonishing samples of humanity? What smells of
supreme pungency poured forth from the frowsy
portals of lazarets and stewards' lockers! What
languors of repletion followed the banquets of
raisins and dried apples and ginger beer and damp
biscuits, banquets specially organized by diplomatic
minions for '*the Cap'n's little boy"! What ec-
stasies of pleasure in the boarding of a tug which
glided away down river to Rotherhithe where, at the
bottom of an enormous dry dock, I saw my father,
and wondered how in the world he had got there, and
how he was going to get out, and what would happen
to him, and to me, if the water came in suddenly and
washed him away, like a black beetle in a bath ! And
better than all, what times of golden glamour when
my friend the office-boy would have what he called
"an 'our orf," and we would wander into Leadenhall
Market, where he would introduce me to the great
dogs who guarded the meat with expressions of in-
credible virtue on their severe and shaggy faces; to
the cats, with their fur all sawdust; and to the
parrots who Hved, Hke Simon Stylites, on the tops of
pillars, and who uttered raucous irrelevancies to an
inattentive audience ! He was very kind to me, that
office-boy, and never left me in difficulties. He al-
ways took me carefully back to the office and called

LOST ADVENTURES 245

my father's attention to my clean hands and face
(after a secret orgy of popcorn purchased near Aid-
gate Pump), and softened for me in many ways the
shocks of existence, so that in time I began to be
reconciled to my lot and no longer regretted my lost
adventures.

THE MARKET

There is a sharp, imperative rap on my outer door;
a rap having within its insistent urgency a shadow of
delicate diffidence, as though the person responsible
were a trifle scared of the performance and on tip-
toe to run away. I roll over and regard the clock.
Four-forty. One of the dubious by-products of con-
tinuous service as a senior assistant at sea is the habit
of waking automatically about four a. m. This
gives one several hours, when ashore, to meditate
upon one's sins, frailties, and (more rarely) triumphs
and virtues. Because a man who gets up at say, four-
thirty, is regarded with aversion ashore. His family
express themselves with superfluous vigour. He
must lie still and meditate, or suff'er the ignominy
of being asked when he is going away again.

But this morning, in these old chambers in an an-
cient Inn buried in the heart of London City, I have
agreed to get up and go out. The reason for this
momentous departure from a life of temporary
but deliberate indolence is a lady. '^Cherchez la
femme" as the French say with the dry animosity of
a logical race. Well, she is not far to seek, being
on the outside of my heavy oak door tapping, as al-

246

THE MARKET 247

ready hinted, with a sharp, insistent deHcacy. To
this romantic summons I reply with an inarticulate
growl of acquiscence, and proceed to get ready. To
relieve the anxiety of any reader who imagines an
impending elopement it may be stated in succinct
truthfulness that we are bound on no such desper-
ate venture. We are going round the corner a few
blocks up the Strand, to Covent Garden Market, to
see the arrival of the metropolitan supply of pro-
duce.

Having accomplished a hasty toilet, almost as
primitive as that favoured by gentlemen aroused to
go on watch, and placating an occasional repetition
of the tapping by brief protests and reports of prog-
ress, I take hat and cane, and drawing the huge
antique bolts of my door, discover a young woman
standing by the window looking out upon the
quadrangle of the old inn. She is a very decided
young woman, who is continually thinking out what
she calls "stunts" for articles in the press. That is
her profession, or one of her professions — ^writing
articles for the press. The other profession is seUing
manuscripts, which constitutes the tender bond be-
tween us. For the usual agent's commission she is
selHng one of my manuscripts. Being an unattached
and, as it were, unprotected male, she plans little
excursions about London to keep me instructed and
entertained. Here she is attired in the flamboyant
finery of a London flower-girl. She is about to get

24-8 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

I

the necessary copy for a special article in a morning

paper. With the exception of a certain expectant
flash of her bright black Irish eyes, she is entirely
businesslike. Commenting on the beauty of an early
summer morning in town, we descend, and passing
out under the ponderous ancient archway, we make
our leisurely progress westward down the Strand.

London is always beautiful to those who love and
understand that extraordinary microcosm; but at
five of a summer morning there is about her an ex-
quisite quality of youthful fragrance and debonair
freshness which goes to the heart. The newly hosed
streets are shining in the sunlight as though paved
with "patins of bright gold." Early 'buses rumble
by from neighbouring barns where they have spent
the night. And, as we near the new Gaiety Theatre,
thrusting forward into the great rivers of traffic
soon to pour round its base like some bold Byzantine
promontory, we see Waterloo Bridge thronged with
wagons, piled high. From all quarters they are
coming, past Charing Cross the great wains are arriv-
ing from Paddington Terminus, from the market-
garden section of Middlesex and Surrey. Down
Wellington Street come carts laden with vegetables
from Brentwood and Coggleshall; and neat vans
packed with crates of watercress which grows in the
lush lowlands of Suffolk and Cambridgeshire; and
behind us are thundering huge four-horse vehicles
from the docks, vehicles with peaches from South

THE MARKET 249

Africa, potatoes from the Canary Islands, onions
from France, apples from California, oranges from
the West Indies, pineapples from Central America,
grapes from Spain, and bananas from Colombia.

We turn in under an archway behind a theatre and
adjacent to the stage-door of the Opera House. The
booths are rapidly filling with produce. Gentlemen
in long alpaca coats and carrying formidable marbled
notebooks walk about with an important air. A
mountain range of pumpkins rises behind a hill of
cabbages. Festoons of onions are being suspended
from rails. The heads of barrels are being knocked
in, disclosing purple grapes buried in cork-dust.
Pears and figs, grown under glass for wealthy patrons,
repose in soft tissue-lined boxes. A broken crate of
Tangerine oranges has spilled its contents in a splash
of ruddy gold on the plank runway. A wagon is
driven in, a heavy load of beets, and the broad wheels
crush through the soft fruit so that the air is heavy
with the acrid sweetness.

We pick our way among the booths and stalls
until we find the flowers. Here is a crowd of ladies —
young, so-so, and some quite matronly, and all
dressed in this same flamboyant finery of which I
have spoken. They are grouped about an almost
overpowering mass of blooms. Roses just now pre-
dominate. There is a satisfying soHdity about
the bunches, a glorious abundance which, in a com-
modity so easily enjoyed without ownership, is

250 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

scarcely credible. I feel no desire to own these huge
aggregations of odorous beauty. It would be like
owning a harem, one imagines. Violets, solid
patches of vivid blue in round baskets, eglantine in
dainty boxes, provide a foil to the majestic blazonry
of the roses and the dew-spangled forest of maiden-^
hair fern near by.

"And what are those things at all?" demands my'
companion, diverted for a moment from the flowers.
She nods toward a mass of dull-green affairs piled on
mats or being lifted from big vans. She is a cockney
and displays surprise when she is told those things are
bananas. She shru gsand turns again to the musk
roses, and forgets. But to me, as the harsh, pene-
trating odour of the green fruit cuts across the heavy
perfume of the flowers, comes a picture of the farms
in distant Colombia or perhaps Costa Rica. There is
nothing like an odour to stir memories. I see the
timber pier and the long line of rackety open-slatted
cars jangling into the dark shed, pushed by a noisy,
squealing locomotive. I see the boys lying asleep
between shifts, their enormous straw hats covering
their faces as they sprawl. In the distance rise the
blue mountains; behind is the motionless blue sea.
I hear the whine of the elevators, the monotonous
click of the counters, the harsh cries of irresponsible
and argumentative natives. I feel the heat of the
tropic day, and see the gleam of the white waves
breaking on yellow sands below tall palms. I recall

THE MARKET 251

the mysterious, impenetrable solitude of the jungle,
a solitude alive, if one is equipped with knowledge,
with a ceaseless warfare of winged and crawling
hosts. And while my companion is busily engaged in
getting copy for a special article about the Market, I
step nimbly out of the way of a swarthy gentleman
from Calabria, who with his two-wheeled barrow is
the last link in the immense chain of transportation
connecting the farmer in the distant tropics and the
cockney pedestrian who halts on the sidewalk and
purchases a banana for a couple of pennies.

RACE

"It is an extraordinary thing," I find myself re-
flecting, standing up to let the waiter take away
the luncheon tray, and looking out of the polished
brass scuttle in a meditative fashion. Coming along-
side is one of the company's launches with a party of
passengers. They confirm my suspicion that it is an
extraordinary thing, this problem of race.

The door has closed behind the coloured gentle-
man and his tray, and I continue to look out of the
window, across the lagoon, which is as smooth and
shining as a sheet of bright new tin, to the shores,
rising tier on tier of inviolate verdure, to the blue
highlands fifty miles away.

There is a tap at the door; it opens, and Don Carlos
enters, wishing to know if I am coming in the boat.

To one brought up in the dense air and congested
mentality of a very old land, the phenomenon of Don
Carlos focuses upon his extensive and peculiar fa-
miHarity with republics and Hberty. The staple
products of his native land are revolutions, panegy-
rics of liberty, and methodical volcanic eruptions
which bury patriots and rebels impartially, and roll

252

RACE 253

black rivers of hot lava over their tin-pot tantrums.
The principal export, one gathers, too, is talent fleeing
from an excess of liberty. So he adumbrates in his
gay boyish fashion, humming "My country, 'tis of
thee"; though whether he means Costaragua, where
he was born, or Provence, where his father was born,
or Spain, where his mother was bom, or the United
States of America, where he is now investigating
new and startling phases of liberty, he does not say.
We may assume, however, that his impressions of
Saxon America are so far favourable, since he is
determined to remain.

Some difficulty is encountered when the attempt
is made to classify him on the ship. In his quality
of Ariel, he is everything, everywhere, only provided
there is mechanism to be tended. There is an ele-
ment of the uncanny in his intuitive comprehension of
machinery, from the operation of a sextant to the in-
testines of a brine-pump, a phonograph, or a camera
lens. Perceiving like lightning, and working like a
leaping flame, he provides the stolid Anglo-Saxon
mechanics with a fund of puzzled, indignant thoughts.
One observes them taking stealthy stock of them-
selves and debating whether they are awake or
dreaming, so incredible does it appear to them to be
bossed by a stripling of one-and-twenty, and, they
mutter, a Dago. This, one gathers, is not to be
borne by men whose ancestors stood meekly round
the village inn while Duke William's hook-nosed min-

254 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

ions took the names of all the folk for the first edition
of Doomsday Book. Intolerable for hot-blooded
gentlemen whose sires proclaimed to a wondering
world a new scheme of government, and made it
work by flinging wide the door to all who were willing
to work.

And how can one fail to sympathize with them?
When a man has grown up in a thousand-year-old
tradition that it will take him seven years to learn a
trade, he is in no condition to admit the possibilities
of genius. And for Don Carlos there is no such thing
as tradition. He had but childish memories of the
days before the war. While Costaragua cannot be
said to have no history, what she has is not of a kind
that can be safely taught in the local schools. He
approaches our civilizations with the frank eyes of a
stellar visitor and the all-embracing knowledge of a
university professor. You must remember his lack
of tradition, if you are to understand his question
about history. For he demands to know the use of it
all. What does it get you? Law, Science, Music,
Engineering — yes, very fine. But why did he have to
learn about the Battle of Lepanto, the Council of
Trent, and the Diet of Worms ? He makes this per-
tinent query as he pulls energetically at the starter of
the motor-boat; and any reply is lost in the thunder-
ous roar of the engine.

I take the tiller as we rush away from the ship's
side. For among the many facilities of his career,

RACE 255

including the divergent enterprises of electrician,
turbine expert, timekeeper on a banana farm,
checker on a coffee plantation, moving-picture oper-
ator, engine driver, clerk in a government office,
toolmaker in a shipyard, and all-round marine
engineer, he belongs par excellence to the gasolene age.
The internal-combustion engine is to him a familiar
spirit, if the jest may be pardoned. For on this
the story, which deals also with liberty and so forth,
depends.

I take the tiller as we rush from the ship's side.
Don Carlos bends over the engine for a few moments,
adjusting the spark and satisfying himself that the
circulating waster is performing its functions; then
he climbs out of the engine-pit and runs along the
gunwale to the after thwarts, where he sits and
begins to talk. And the point of the story is the
destruction of a young and exquisite sentiment in his
heart. He does not clearly perceive this, and may
not comprehend its full significance for a good many
years yet. But it has a pertinent bearing upon the
aforesaid problem of race, and the genesis of na-
tionality under the modern conceptions of govern-
ment.

As we make the entrance of the lagoon, and the
ocean wind roars in our ears, and the boat takes her
first buoyant plunge into an immense opaline swell,
I endeavour to justify the college professor's infatua-
tion with the Battle of Lepanto, where, I remark in

256 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

parenthesis, Cervantes did himself no discredit. 1
take as an example this very seaboard along which
we are travelling in a gasolene boat. I point out
certain low jungle-clad hillocks between us and the
little white village inside, and I tell Don Carlos how
one Francis Drake, a hard-bitten English pirate of
the seventeenth century, came up after nightfall one
evening and, anchoring, rowed ashore with muffled
oars and crept through the dense undergrowth
until, the surprised and sleepy sentry struggling to
unloose their iron grip from his throat, he and his men
stood within the shadows of the stockades.

A grim tale, typical of the times, and the outcome
of great events and dignified animosities half a world
away. And Don Carlos laughs, for he bears no
malice toward the English who flew at the throats of
his ancestors for so many strenuous years. Indeed,
one derives a certain consolation from the fact that,
while the English experience the usual human dif-
ficulty in loving their enemies, they certainly seem
to achieve success in making their enemies love them;
and that is something in a fallen world. He laughs
and bears no malice. He sits with his hands clasped
round his knees, looking down meditatively for a mo-
ment at the spinning shaft, and then suddenly
startles me by demanding if I have ever been in jail.

This is so unexpected that, as we get round the
point and into smoother water, I am at a loss to see
how the question bears upon my feeble attempts

RACE 257

to justify the study of history in a world made safe
for democracy. A hasty review of an obscure and
more or less blameless life enables me to disclaim the
honour. But, it seems, he has. And he explains
that for three weeks he was a poHtical prisoner in the
barracks up at San Benito in Costaragua. That was,
oh, two years ago, and he was nineteen at the time.
Just before he came to the States. And resting his
arms on his knees and regarding me with his bright,
smoked-hazel eyes, he relates his adventures as a
political suspect.

It is essential to explain in the beginning, however,
how he came to be so late in getting any ideas, as
he calls it, about his country. The fact is, he ran
entirely, as a child, to machinery. It assumed the
dimensions of a passion, for he describes his emotions
on encountering a new mechanism, and they are
easily identified as a species of divine ecstasy.

As, for example, when he, a slender, quick-eyed
schoolboy, stood in front of the Hotel Granada in
San Benito and devoured with his eyes the first
automobile ever seen in that remote -capital. He
waited for the owner to come out and start it, with a
feeling akin to vertigo. And the owner, it appears,
was an Englishman, a bulky person in knickerbockers
and a monocle, prospecting, with racial rapacity,
for gold. He came out and scrutinized the small,
palpitating being crouched down on its hams and
peering frantically under the chassis; demanded in

258 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

an enormous, gruff voice what the deuce Don Carlos
was up to.

"Oh, please, can I see the motor? I've never seen

a motor."

**Why should I show you my motor, eh?"
"Oh, I do want to look at it, only for a minute!"
And Don Carlos asserts that he was so worked
up that he touched the rough tweed sleeve and stood
on one leg.

The Englishman seemed amused at this and asked
him where he learned his English. In the college,
eh? Wish to the deuce his college in Oxford had
taught him Spanish, confound it! Well, suppose
they strike a bargain, eh? Don Carlos might wash
the car if he, the owner, let him look at the motor.
How about it?

He spoke to the empty air. Don Carlos had van-
ished into the Hotel Granada, seized a bucket and
broom, and was dashing back again to start washing
the car. Never was a car cleansed with such miracu-
lous efficiency and speed.

But suppose, said the Englishman, when bucket
and broom were restored to an indignant kitchen-
maid, that he now declined to let Don Carlos look at
the motor. Somewhat to his astonishment, the
small vivacious body became still, the eyes were cast
down, and he was informed in a grave voice that
such a thing was impossible. But why? he insisted,
keeping his cigarette away from his mouth for quite

RACE 259

a while in his interest. Well, remarked Don Carlos
coldly, an Englishman always kept his promise —
they were taught so in the college. Were they, by
Jove! It was, the stranger added under his breath,
news to him, for Corfield had just been butchered in
SomaHland and nobody at home seemed to care.
Always kept their promises, did they? And he
supposed some infernal professor in the college was
teaching all these Latin-American kids to regard
English promises as sacred, ** giving us a darned
difficult reputation to live up to, young man."

Well, here goes! He raised the bonnet of his toil-
worn car, and Don Carlos stooped in ecstasy to gloat
over the four hot, dry cylinders, the fan, the wires,
the smell of gasolene. Twenty-five horse! He mut-
ters apologetically to me (he was only a kid, I am to
remember) that he had got the silly notion into his
head that there were twenty-five little horses toiling
away under that hood to pull the car. But I don't
think it needs any apology. I think it is beautiful,
and the authentic thought of a child.

Well, he gazed and gazed, almost glaring in a des-
perate attempt to fix it all imperishably on his mem-
ory before the bonnet slowly descended and the vision
was shut out. Don Carlos says he remembered
everything so that he could draw it, even the grease-
spots, and a chip oflFone of the spark-plugs; and rais-
ing his eyes to the green shores along which we are
running, he says that he supposes I do not beheve this.

26o HARBOURS OF MEMORY

On the contrary, I see no reason why I should not
beheve it. I tell him of the boy Mozart, who lis-
tened but once to the Vatican Mass at Rome, and
came out to write it all down.

Without any mistakes? Don Carlos demands
with sudden, intense energy. No, I say, he had to
go back and correct one or two notes next day. Don
Carlos nods and smiles in a mysterious fashion, and
proceeds. He has another improbable statement to
make. He says that, as the motor stuttered and
roared, and the car sprang away into the dust of the
Calle San Bernardino, he burst into tears.

And this is the point of the episode. His emo-
tions as a youth were preoccupied with fascinating
things like electric pumps, a broken adding-machine,
learning the fiddle, and dancing with the extremely
pretty girls of Costaragua. Costaragua itself had
made no appeal to him. It is what can be called
a difficult country in more senses than one. It is a
country of immense tree-clad gorges and cloud-
capped mountains, with rivers as steep as staircases
and volcanoes of uncertain temper. It is a country
"where butterflies grow to be a foot across the wings,
and mosquitoes bite to kill. It is a country with a
seaboard as hot and undesirable as a West African
swamp; while inland, at four thousand feet, San
Benito Hes spread out on a cool and pleasant plateau.
It is a country, moreover, where revolutions alter-
nate with earthquakes, and between the two a life

RACE 261

insurance policy runs high. And a country destitute
of external oppressors and internal traditions is at a
loss to make any profound impression upon a sensi-
tive youth preoccupied with engines and girls. The
appeal had to come indirectly.

From across the world came an immense rumour of
war, an upheaval so vast that even in distant Cos-
taragua life rocked uneasily. Local English, French,
and Belgians drew into a group, silent and thoughtful.
Neighbours with harsh names difficult for Iberian
tongues to utter held little celebrations from week
to week as the field-gray hordes rolled on toward
Paris. And to Don Carlos, buried in a Spanish
traduction, as he calls it, of Gibbon's ** Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire,'' and driving himself
half crazy in a superhuman effort to understand just
how a bird uses his wings to get off the ground, was
suddenly hauled out of his dreams by the news that
two of his cousins in far Provence had been cited for
valour, while yet another was dead at Verdun.

It was like a galvanic shock, because valour and
death in defence of one's country were to him novel
conceptions. And they were his kin. He was
working for the Costaragua Railroad at that time,
and as he overhauled the rolling-stock he turned the
matter over in his mind. They were his kin, but
France was far away. His father had been killed in
one of the innumerable revolutions of Costaragua.
And it came upon him with abrupt clarity that dy-

262 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

ing for one's country was, after all, nothing much
unless one was prepared to live for it.

This was not so simple as it may seem to one who
has been drilled from infancy in the civic virtues.
In Costaragua, as in most small national aggrega-
tions, family is of paramount importance. You may
be poor and work in a picture-house evenings, but
you do not therefore lose caste as a member of the
first families. And the tendency was for all these
gentry, as we would call them in England, to adhere
to the Liberal faction. So the best Don Carlos could
do for himself at the time, with his limited knowledge
of world-politics, was to conceive a very honest
enthusiasm for the government in power, and indulge
in a few fantastic dreams of Costaragua as a rich
and powerful country. The point to remember is
that, so far as it went, it was a genuine inspiration, a
solid basis on which a more fortunate turn of events
might have erected a pure and passionate love for the
land of his birth.

And on top of this, as if to confirm him in his new
ideas, he was ordered one day to drive a special car
to the coast. It was not merely his consummate
skill in handling motor cars that singled him out for
this honour. The railway had an ample supply of
competent drivers. But they were, many of them,
tinged with an unfortunate prejudice toward a stable
government. The great upheaval in Europe had
caused a number of persons of pronounced radical

RACE 263

views to take up their residence in Costaragua. The
special motor car, a large and richly appointed affair
in varnished mahogany and red silk curtains, with a
cab in front for the driver, was destined to convey the
brother of the President and the Minister for War
to the coast. It was desirable, therefore, that some-
one of good family and undoubted fidelity be chosen
to drive.

He had made the trip so often that it was nothing.
The only thing that made this one any different was
a novel emotion of pride in being chosen to serve
the Government. Not that he had any ridiculous
reverence for the President's brother. Everybody
in San Benito was secretly amused at that heavy-
jowled, dark-browed, secretive, and pompous per-
sonage. He had one defect which is intuitively
divined by the Latin — he was stupid. When a min-
ister from a foreign power, after a reception, had
jokingly remarked on the comparative sizes of their
hats, the President's brother had received with a
look of blank puzzlement the remark that he had
a large head. "Of course! I am the President's
brother!" he observed in bewilderment. Don Carlos
says the story went round behind the fans of the
San Benito ladies like a ripple of phosphorescence on
dark water.

Well, he was that sort of man. Quite different
from the President, who was clever in many ways,
with a pen, with a sword, with a revolver. In his

264 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

career as President he had frequent recourse to
all three talents. He was not clever enough, however,
to dispense with his gloomy brother, who held ob-
stinately to the view that it was he who had en-
gineered the coup d^etat that raised the intellectual
duellist to the throne. He pervaded the social at-
mosphere of San Benito, posing as a sort of Bismarck,
and was observed to model his deportment upon that
eminent political stage-manager.

This was the illustrious passenger, accompanied
by a short, animated gentleman with a black, up-
standing moustache, the pair of them garbed in
great cloaks and heavy-brimmed hats, who stood
on the private platform of the terminal station as Don
Carlos brought the big vehicle to a halt. The Ad-
ministrador of the line hurried up to open the door
and hand in the baggage. He himself was going up
to his farm in the interior for a few weeks' holiday.
He hoped the trip would be pleasant. The line had
been cleared of everything in advance. Once past
Ensenada, where the up mail train was side-tracked
for half an hour, they had a clear run into Puerto
Balboa, a hundred miles distant and four thousand
feet below.

II

And now, while we run the boat in toward the
yellow sands of a small, sequestered beach, backed
by an impenetrable tropical jungle, and wade ashore

RACE 265

with our clothes held high, it is necessary to give
the urban dweller in a temperate zone some clear
notion of this railroad over which the youthful patriot
was to drive his massive Condorcet-model car. To
an EngHshman, whose railways have the sober per-
manence and social aloofness of the House of Lords,
or to an American accustomed to quadruple tracks
vibrating at all hours to the hammering impact of
enormous haulage, this Eastern Railroad of Costa-
ragua gives the same bizarre impression as would an
impulsive Oriental dancing girl in a quiet New Eng-
land sewing-circle.

Not that there is anything scandalous or repre-
hensible in its beginnings. The track runs quietly
out of San Benito, between high, hving palisades of
green, through the occasional gaps of which you can
get ghmpses of gardens with low houses closely
girdled by screened verandas. All the houses in
San Benito are low, sky-scrapers being at an ominous
discount in a land so insecurely bolted down. The
houses are low, the roofs hght, the doors made to
swing easily, and the people religiously inclined.
There is one city, Ortygia, through which we pass
presently, once an ambitious rival of San Benito —
which is dreadful to contemplate, for the houses are
now tortured ruins and the cemetery is full of jostl-
ing tombs which fell in upon each other as the earth
split open and crashed, and split again, and then
suddenly remained rigid, so that the white head-

266 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

stones sticking out of the riven furrows look like the
teeth of the grinning jaws of Fate.

But that is not yet. San Benito is built upon a
gentle eminence, in the centre of a wide, fertile
plateau; so that, as you stand at the intersections of
her broad, pleasant streets, you can see all around
the ascending rim of the green-clad mountains, with
a glimpse to the eastward of that formidable person-
ahty, the crater of Mount Cornaru with his forty-
mile plume of rolling smoke darkening the sunrise.

And so, if the reader can figure himself in an air-
plane for a moment, he might have seen, on looking
down upon this peaceful country one evening, the
roof of the big Condorcet bumping rapidly along the
single track between the gardens and coffee farms,
like a large and intelligent beetle.

But, on reaching the rim of the plateau, the
character of the railroad changes with starthng
abruptness. It plunges into a dark cleft in the
earth, and begins to twist and squirm until all sense
of direction is lost. It emerges upon a perilous,
spidery trestle, which is insecurely pinned to the
bosom of a thousand-foot precipice. It slides
athwart up-ended landscapes of a green so intense
that it fatigues the eye like the lustrous sheen of an
insect's wings or the translucent glazing of antique
pottery. It rolls rapidly down to the very verge of
a drop that leaves one spent with vertiginous amaze-
ment, and turns away into a tunnel, after giving

RACE 267

one a sickening and vivid view of a wrecked train
half submerged in the river below. It becomes
preoccupied with that river. It returns to those
appalHng banks with enervating persistence. It
refuses to be allured by the crumbling yet com-
paratively safe-looking sides of Mount Cornaru, now
towering on our left Hke the very temple of disaster.
It reaches out on perilous cantilevers and swaying
suspension-chains, to look into that swiftly rushing
streak of silver almost lost in the gloom of the tropical
canyon. It dodges declivities and protrusions, only
to dart to the edge again and again. For this is
the only way to Puerto Balboa, down the valley of
the Corcubion River.

And now the reader must imagine night about to
fall, Ortygia and Ensenada, with its side-tracked
mail train impatiently tolHng its bell and blowing
off, left behind, and Don Carlos, in the gloom of his
cab in front of the Condorcet, stepping on his ac-
celerator and bolting headlong down the above-
described permanent way. His orders were to make
all possible speed — the sort of order which gives him
great joy.

There was only one shadow on his mind. He
was not sure that at full speed he could see a for-
gotten hand-car in time to pull up. One of the
captivating habits of the native plate-layer is to
leave his hand-car on the rails and go away into a
niche of the rocks to sleep. In the ordinary day's

268 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

work the cow-catchers, one of which was securely
bolted to the front of the Condorcet, would send the
obstruction flying into space, and the journey would
proceed unbroken. Don Carlos did not desire to
take that risk with the President's brother. It
might disturb his equanimity, upon which he set a
most ridiculous store. But speed must be made. A
conference on board a steamer lying at Puerto
Balboa was booked for that night.

Don Carlos, peering out along the beam of his
searchlight, which was a long white cone littered
with enormous moths and startling shadows, went
ahead. And then, turning into a fifty-yard straight
at about fifty miles an hour he suddenly saw the
dreaded hand-car right under him. There was a
crunch, a jolt, a sparkle of metal crashing against
metal, a shiver of glass, and the hand-car, game to
the last, before shooting away and turning gracefully
end over end into oblivion, lifted the front wheels
of the Condorcet, so that the large and richly ap-
pointed affair waddled and reeled into the soft earth
of the embankment, and halted.

Halted just in time, Don Carlos admits. He had
no qualms. That is one of his characteristics —
control. He darts at once, in a case of danger or
difficulty, to the only possible means of recovery.
He hopped out of the cab and, unhitching a thin and
pliant steel cable from where it hung, he began to
seek a purchase. He found it in an ebony tree not

RACE 269

far away, took a bend round it, rove the shackle
through the dead-eye of a small barrel fitted to the
Condorcet's rear axles for haulage purposes, and
running back to the cab, started the engine. The
wheels began to scutter and slither, the wire-rope
slowly wound itself on the revolving barrel, and the
heavy car began to crawl upward toward the track.
To take fresh hold, to haul out a couple of ramps
and lever the car into position so that one more
jerk astern settled her on the rails with a bump,
was the work of a few moments. And then a
perspiring Don Carlos bethought him of his pas-
sengers. Thus far they had remained in enigmatic
silence within the red silk curtain of the car. Don
Carlos pulled open the door and peeped in. The
Minister for War was sitting up, holding on with
frantic energy to an ornate arm-strap. The Presi-
dent's brother was lying perfectly still, on his face,
his head under the seat, his shoes, large number elev-
ens, with the soles close by the door. Don Carlos
pulled tentatively at one of these shoes; the owner
gave a sudden hysterical wriggle and sat up, holding
to his breast a bleeding finger. Don Carlos was
rather alarmed. He inquired respectfully if the
gentlemen were hurt, and informed them that all
danger was past.

"We are not killed," said the military one with a
pious aside.

"I have injured my finger," said the President's

270 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

brother with Bismarckian brevity. "There must
be an inquiry into this affair."

"But it is all over," suggested Don Carlos.

"Not at all," observed the President's brother.
"It is only beginning — at the inquiry."

It is not the way of Don Carlos to argue in this
fashion. He has not the mentality to brood on
what is past. He slammed the door, making both
of his passengers jump, dimbed into the cab, switched
on his side-lights, and started off once more. An
hour later, the car rolled into the station at Puerto
Balboa, and Don Carlos stretched himself out on
the red plush cushions vacated by the President's
brother, and slept like a top till dawn.

And that, in the ordinary course of events, would
have closed the incident, but for the attitude of the
President's brother. That austere and suspicious
statesman was not of the mental calibre to gauge
accurately or justly the eager and swift-witted lad
who had retrieved the situation. He was afflicted
with a political cast of mind. He saw a sinister and
deep-laid plot to assassinate the President's brother
and chief military adviser. He brooded upon this
idea until he saw the whole of Costaragua aquiver
with hostile designs. He returned in a steam-
hauled armoured car, which got derailed near Ortygia
and nearly killed him in real earnest, the track
having been disturbed by a large mass of rock
tumbling five hundred feet and smashing a culvert.

RACE 271

He summoned the Chief of PoHce as soon as he was
once more safe in San Benito, and ordered the arrest
of Don Carlos as a poHtical suspect.

There was a great to-do, he assures me, in his
home, when they came for him. He was with his
mother and sisters, and they began to weep. His
own feelings seem to have crystallized into a species
of contempt for the stupidity of the whole business.
That, I fear, is his weakness. He cannot credit the
sad but immovable fact that the majority of people
are not at all clever, that our civilization tends to
put a premium on mental density and folly. And
when he was finally incarcerated in the calabozo
behind the Government Buildings, he sat down and
began to think and think.

Ill

We lay there on the narrow strip of hot white sand,
between the dense green wall of the jungle and the
ghttering blue sea, and stared up into a flawless
sapphire sky. And our thoughts, helped out by a
lazy comment or two, were on these lines: Do our
governors know as much as they should about
governing? Or put it this way: Doesn't it seem as
if the tendency of our Western notions is to engender
useless bitterness in the hearts of the young, the un-
sophisticated, and the guileless? Neither of us has
any very clear ideas on the subject. He, the Latin,
is the more logical. ''What do you want government

272 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

at all jorV he demands harshly; and there is a long
silence, broken only by the soft kiss of the waves
on the sand and the breeze stirring the tops of the
mahogany trees and cocoanut palms.

In time, of course, he will see why we want govern-
ment at all. He will see many things as he goes on.
He may even forget the animosity born of those three
weeks in jail. But the new and beautiful conception
of self-dedication to his country was killed and can
never be recalled. He will always be suspicious of
political motives. His virtue will be without roots.
That, I take it, is the problem of to-day. We have to
provide a soil in which all these transplanted virtues
can strike root. We have to devise a scheme that
will prevent the spirited youth of the land from
sitting down in bitterness, to think and think.

Of course, it must not be supposed that the son of
a good family was permitted to languish in prison
without comment. But, for the time, the Presi-
dent's brother had it all his own way. He showed
his damaged finger and congratulated the Liberals
on having nipped a dangerous conspiracy in the bud.
Efforts to reach the Administrador were futile, he
being high up in the interior beyond rail or wire. So
Don Carlos sat there and formulated his plans. He
might be shot, which worried him not at all. But if
he got out, he would go away. That was decided for
all time, as he sat there thinking of the immense
number of fools in the world. His mother came to

RACE 273

see him, and went away frightened. There was a
meeting of "the family," mother and two daughters,
to discuss what should be done.

It is strange to hear from him, as he lies on the hot
sand, the reasons for their concern, and his views of
"the family.' "I support them," he remarks gravely,
"and so they have a right to know my decisions."

While I am digesting this somewhat unusual
fiHal attitude, he goes on to describe the Admin-
istrador's sudden return, the telephone calls, carried
on in shouts, between the railroad office, the police-
office, and the President's house. And shortly
after, Don Carlos, contemptuous as ever of stupidity,
walked out and went home to his family. The Ad-
ministrador was able to do this because the President
had married his wife's niece and the Chief of Police
was his cousin.

He came round to the house while the family were
in council and announced his intention of giving Don
Carlos a job on the coast. The President's brother
had been advised by his physician to go into the
country. Don Carlos decHned the job on the coast.
He said all he wanted of anybody was a ticket to
the United States. The Administrador thrashed his
polished leathern gaiters with his cane and looked
very hard at the sullen youth in front of him. He
asked if Don Carlos knew what would happen to him
if he did go to the United States. The boy said he
did not know, and did not care so long as he went.

274 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

Well, he, the Administrador would tell him what
would happen. "You," he informed Don Carlos,
pointing his cane at him, "will be a millionaire inside
of ten years."

And immediately I conceive an immense respect
for this bluff creature of Latin-American politics,
because he has had the vision to see what he had
there before him.

Don Carlos looks at him and waits for the rest of
the oration, merely murmuring, "And ?"

"And you will abandon your native Costaragua for
ever," continues the Administrador.

And that, says Don Carlos as we resume our
journey along the coast, was true anyhow. He
went to the United States, or rather New York, and
he plunged into the life of the city with the naive
egotism of a traditionless expatriate. Any idea that
opportunities imply responsible allegiance is not
yet born. When I mention in passing that the
Chief Executive at the White House is far from being
what is called wealthy, he looks incredulous and
inquires, "What's he president for, then .?" But as we
speed round a green headland, which conceals the
mouth of a river, and as we start on our way up
this river, I ask Don Carlos just why he pre-
fers the States to his native Costaragua or the
neighbouring Republic of Contigua. After all, I
argue with the illogical folly of the English, he must
have some feeling of love for the land where he was

RACE 275

born and grew up. Suppose, for instance, Contigua
declared war on Costaragua, would he not take the
first boat back home and offer himself as a sacrifice
to his country? Would not Costaraguans the world
over collect in great seaports, and lie and smuggle
and scheme to get themselves home to enlist?

He is silent for a while, as the immense vertical
green walls of the gorge, through which the river
runs, close round us. And then he says soberly that
a country like his does not get you that way. He is
speaking a foreign language, one must remember,
and he turns over various unsuitable phrases to hold
his meaning. It is diflFerent. It is, very much of it,
hke this; and he waves his hand toward the shores.

The river winds and winds. High up above the
towering cliff of eternal verdure gleams a solid blue
sky like a hot stone. We are in a green gloom. The
river, fabulously deep, flows without a ripple, like a
sheet of old jade. There is no movement of bird or
tree or animal. One is oppressed by the omnipotent
energy of the vegetation which reaches down from its
under-cut banks as if seeking to hold the very water
from flowing away. And the crazy notion takes
hold of one's mind that this sort of thing is not
conducive to sanity, or morality, or patriotism, or
any of the funny old-fashioned ideas that grow rather
well in our northern air. One begins to understand
what Don Carlos means when he says it does not
get you that way.

276 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

And then I poke him up with something he has
forgotten. I lead him on to see how he and his
contemporaries are in the grip of machinery. He
even learned English composition by means of
lecture-records on a phonograph, a hoarse voice
blaring at him, out of a black iron box, selections
from Keats and Shelley. There is something metal-
lic in his voice even now as he repeats from memory —

**Hail to thee, blithe spirit,

Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven or near it

Pourest thy full heart," —

and growing cautious as he approaches the last Hne
with its ^'unpremeditated art." Well, he is satisfied
machinery can do everything. His mind already
plays about unsolved problems of mechanism. All
right, I concede. And now will he tell me, as a
favour, what are we all going to do, later, when the
fuel gives out.?

As we approach the ship in the darkness and
figures come to the rail to see us arrive, he falls silent,
and I chuckle. After all, it is up to him and his like,
clever young supermen, to get us out of the hole
they have got us into, with their wonderful inven-
tions. We dunderheads can go back to keeping
chickens and writing poetry and watching the sun-
sets over blue hills, and we shall be content. But
when the fuel runs out, and the machines run down.

RACE 277

and the furnaces are cold and dead, and the wheels
stop turning, what then, O wonderful youth, what
then? Will you harness volcanoes and the tides?
Will you contrive great burning glasses, and turn the
alkali deserts into enormous storage batteries ? or will
you fly away in planes to some other planet where
there is an abundance of fuel and no fools at all?

At which Don Carlos laughs and says I have
plenty of ideas. That, indeed, is his solution of the
problem. He is not afraid so long as we continue to
have ideas.

And so I leave him at the gangway and climb up to
the smooth, brilliantly lighted decks, where the
ladies and gentlemen of many races recline in deck-
chairs, or promenade to and fro. There is no doubt,
I reflect, that the Administrador's prophecy will
come true. He will be rich by virtue of his ideas,
and a leader of men by virtue of his personality.
He is for ever dissociated from us, who toil and fail
and toil again, until we achieve some pitiful travesty
of our dreams. He functions, as we say, perfectly.
But what will he do, I wonder, when the fuel of life
runs down?

THE ARTIST PHILOSOPHER

It was Francis Grierson, some years ago, in a
brief article in the New Jge, who first called at-
tention to the very remarkable qualities of a book
called "The Nigger of the Narcissus," just then
pubHshed by Heinemann at a shilling. It was a
slim, scarlet, easily held book, designed to read in
bed, pack in a grip, lend to a friend, or slip in the
pocket against a rail journey in the middle of the
day, when the morning paper had been read and the
evening journals were not yet on the stands. It
may have been by design that this article came
out just at that moment, for Heinemann was an
admirable tactician. Bad literature was abhorrent
to him, as may be seen by the books bearing his
imprimatur; but he doubtless saw no reason why a
man who published fine books should not let it get
about, or should refrain from mentioning it in a
friendly way. It may be remarked that a number
of English publishers at that time were in the habit
of issuing books in a manner that can only be des-
cribed as virtuously surreptitious. They did good
by stealth. It would not do to say that any house
ever published a book without informing its shipping

278

THE ARTIST PHILOSOPHER 279

department, but it amounted to that in the long run.
Mr. Heinemann was not that sort of pubhsher.
Francis Grierson's article appeared in the New
Age; the slim red book appeared in the book stores;
and a new light shone before the present writer. For
the first time in his life he became aware of the
existence of a writer named Conrad.

It was an extraordinary experience. It was also a
very chastening one. For the present writer had
not only written but published a book of his own,
deahng with the sea and with seamen. He had
grown up in a genuine tradition of the mercantile
marine. Sea captains had been so close to him all
his life that he accepted them as part of the sur-
rounding landscape. A long period of literary and
artistic gestation in Chelsea had somewhat alienated
him from the rich humanity of his seafaring relatives.
And here in "The Nigger of the Narcissus" he found
them again transfigured to heroic dimensions, like
the sombre and enormous shadows of grown-ups on
the nursery wall.

It was in Glasgow on an evening in late summer
that the present writer walked along Sauchiehall
Street and, turning down Radnor and Finniestonn
streets, entered the Queen's Dock, where his ship
lay. "The Nigger of the Narcissus" was under
his arm. The rays of the setting sun still threw a
twilight and roseate glamour over the interminable
ridge of the Hills of Old Kilpatrick; and with the

28o HARBOURS OF MEMORY

story of the "Nigger" yet vibrating in his brain, he
made his way up the gangway and descended the
short ladder to the iron deck of the elderly freighter.
It is not too much to say that he regarded her
shapely old hull and comfortable quarters with
profound affection. Built some fifteen years before
for the nine-knot Australian trade, she was now
relegated to the shorter voyages to the Mediter-
ranean. We had been a long time together, com-
mander, mates, engineers, including the donkeyman,
the carpenter, and the engine-storekeeper. The last
three were much more like the characters in a dream
play than quick active seamen. The donkeyman
was a Turk and lived in a sort of solitary and im-
maculate retirement in a three-cornered cabin in the
forecastle. The carpenter was a Norwegian, and
haunted the steering-house aft, where he shut himself
up and fashioned models of fabulous saihng ships.
The storekeeper, who owned to the entirely inad-
equate name of Frank Freshwater, was a wilHng
and diminutive EngHshman with a large nose and an
immense military moustache. He was known to
speak to both donkeyman and Chips, and in fact may
have been created for the sole purpose of communicat-
ing between them; but even that degree of loquacity
dried up on nearing Glasgow. He was the sad
proprietor of a ferocious virago who would appear on
the quay with miraculous promptitude the moment
the gangway slid over, and wait relentlessly for him

THE ARTIST PHILOSOPHER 281

to appear. He never did appear, it is necessary to
add. The whole ship's company became enthusiastic
sporting accessories to the fact of poor old Fresh-
water's unobtrusive escape, while some hardened
married man goaded the virago to paroxysms of
absurd rage, until the dock policeman walked stol-
idly in our direction, preening his moustache.

And the principal bond between all of us there on
that ship was a very honest liking for the Chief. The
Turk once said to the present writer who was second
engineer at the time, "Z^ cheef, ee iz my fazzer" —
and was so prostrated with that display of dramatic
and emotional volubility that he did not speak again
for a fortnight — unless he talked to himself. To
Frank Freshwater the Chief presented another and
equally admirable facet: "One of the truest men
who ever stood in shoe-leather." Frank's estimate
is quoted because it was a very accurate description.
The Chief was just that. And as the present writer
came aboard with "The Nigger of the Narcissus"
under his arm, he beheld the burly form of the Chief,
standing by the door of the port alleyway, stripped to
the waist, his large, pale, hairy arms folded, his bosom
screened from view by his patriarchal beard, smoking
a cigarette in the end of a long black holder.

"Well," said he, taking the holder from his lips
and looking down at the great curve of his abdomen,
"did you have a good time.?"'

Simple words, expressing a simple kindly considera-

282 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

tion; yet by virtue of the magical tale just read, the
present writer saw those words in a new and enchant-
ing Hght. He saw perhaps for the first time in his
literary life the true function of dialogue as a resonant
and plangent element through which the forms and
characters of men can be projected upon the retina of
the reader. He became aware of a more subtle music
in the very shape and timbre of the long-familiar
phrases. And behind the amiable superior and valu-
able shipmate he suddenly saw that quiet, attentive,
bearded man as a character in a book, the uncon-
scious victim of a future work of art.

This is a great stride in life — to get behind the
switchboard, as one may say, and see even for a brief
illuminating moment the various resistances and in-
sulations, the connection to earth, without which
one's impact upon humanity is a floating foolish pose.
The author who does this for you is for ever memor-
able, quite apart from his intrinsic value to the
public.

I said, "Yes, I had a good time.'' And I added
with a curious feeling of diffident exultation, "I have
a book here I would like you to read. It seems to me
rather good."

He took it and at once made that faint and some-
what vague gesture which invariably accompanied a
gentle murmur of apology about his glasses. Turn-
ing to the low door leading to his room, we passed in.
There was no dynamo on that ship, and a study-

THE ARTIST PHILOSOPHER 283

lamp with a brown shade stood on a little desk by
the settee. Adjusting a pair of spectacles on his
nose, the Chief opened the book and began to read the
title-page. He stood there — a remarkable nude
figure with his shining bald head and venerable
beard — holding the volume at arm's length and
looking down through his glasses with severe atten-
tion. The first page and the second were read and
turned, and he never moved.

So I left him and went round to my cabin on the
starboard side. The ship was moving under the
coal-tips early next morning, and it was due to this
that some time after midnight I was still about, and
noticed the Hght still burning in his room. I went in.
He was standing there turning the last immortal
pages. He had put on an old patrol coat and had
buttoned it absently over his beard. I have often
thought that Conrad must have met him somewhere:
he is so exactly presented in "Heart of Darkness'* as
the amiable engineer of the river boat who put his
beard in a bag to keep it clean. The discerning will
recall that person's bald head, whose hair — Conrad
whimsically observes — had fallen to his chin, where
it had prospered. He lowered his head and looked at
me over his glasses as I made some professional
remark, and laid the book down.

"A funny thing," he observed in his quiet precise
voice. "This nigger says a girl chucked the third
engineer of a Rennie boat for him." He stroked his

284 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

beard with a broad powerful palm. "You know, I
was third of a Rennie boat in my young days." He
meditated for a moment and added, **That book
makes you feel, somehow."

A notable reflection.

And as time went on it became a habit of the pres-
ent writer to experiment on his shipmates by noting
their reactions to the works of Conrad. The point to
remember is that, neglecting certain easily explained
failures, men reacted in direct ratio to their integrity
of character. The cunning, the avaricious, and the
ignoble are not admirers of Conrad. There is some-
thing in the style and the spirit which reaches surely
and inexorably down into a man's moral resources
and sounds them for him. To those who in the
jargon of the red-blooded fraternity want a story, it
is to be feared our author does not appeal. This was
exemplified by "Typhoon" which was tried upon a
naval reserve officer, a brisk efficient resourceful
young man with an acute "examination brain." His
criticism was brief and emphatic. "You could
write the whole story on a couple of sheets of fools-
cap," he grumbled. "There's nothing to it; too far-
fetched as well." He shut the book with a sudden
snap of fingers and thumb, and passed it back,
promptly forgetting the whole affair. He is neither
cunning, avaricious, nor ignoble, but he is afflicted
with the modern conception of efficiency. For him
romance Hes in the past of highwaymen, knights in

THE ARTIST PHILOSOPHER 285

shining armour, and Machiavellian cardinals of in-
conceivable obliquity.

To a writer who has indulged his humour by-
watching seafaring folk in their reactions as men-
tioned above, the collected prefaces which Conrad
has written for the Sun Dial edition of his works,
under the title of "Notes of My Books," have a
very special interest. They tell with a direct and
disarming candour the authentic origin of the tales.
The troublesome enthusiast who is for ever seeking
the fiction which is "founded on fact" will get
small comfort here, for here are the facts. It is
the penalty of success in the fictional art to illumine
the obscure experiences of worthy members of the
pubhc and convince them that such and such an
affair "actually happened." These folk are very
timid at trying their wings. They dread leaving
the solid earth behind. It is a positive comfort
to them to feel that the things which have touched
their hearts are only the bright shadows of the hard
actualities under their feet. The chief engineer
to whom I presented "Lord Jim" (not the beloved
and bearded personality described above), was an
interesting variant of this. A hard-bitten portly
individual, an excellent officer, and well read withal,
he deprecated in its entirety the Conradian philos-
ophy and literary method. Yes, he knew the story
out East, as did everybody else. A ship called the
Jeddahy it was, which ran over a sunken derehct

286 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

and broke her back. The officers left her. Who
wouldn't? A milHon chances to one against her
lasting ten minutes. Conrad had idealized the
mate Jim, that was all.

That was the word he used: "idealized." He was
a blunt Englishman, with his emotions planted al-
most inaccessibly deep down among his racial pre-
judices. He objected really to anybody's discussing
the fundamental motives of man. It was not the
thing to do. Possibly the slight imponderable
irony which almost always creeps into Conrad's
descriptions of seagoing engineers, was responsible
for my friend's irritation. Leaving out the worthy
Solomon Rout in "Typhoon," Conrad seems to have
been something less than fortunate in his engineer
types

At the other end of the scale the present writer
preserves a most lively memory of his introduction
to "Youth" by the third mate of a beef ship running
into London River. An alert and cheerful college
boy who had been through the hard gruelling of an
apprenticeship in sail, he was at that stage of the
twenties when one is equally interesting to the women
of thirty, the men of forty, and the mothers of
fifty. And it was he who, as we were passing the
watch below in friendly comparison of books read,
suddenly lighted up all over his fresh ruddy features
and said in a glow of dehcious enthusiasm, "I say,
haven't you read *Youth'? My word, but you

THE ARTIST PHILOSOPHER 287

must read *YouthM It's ripping! The finest tale
I ever read in my life!"

And he stuck to it in spite of anything the others
might say. He had been caught by the extraordin-
ary glamour of the thing, the superb simplicity
of the narrative, the cumulative power of the finale.
He would never be the same being again after reading
that tale. Here we have an achievement for which
there is no adequate name save genius.

Other books there are of Conrad's which enshrine
no memories of a shipmate's admiration or dislike.
There is "Nostromo" for instance, that little-read
masterpiece of creative literature. Ordered from
London during the war, and read while voyaging
between Port Said and Saloniki, this "tale of a
seaboard" made the monotonous business of naval
transport seem a dim and ridiculous fragment
of unreality. The huge size of the canvas, the sweep
and surge of the narrative, the sudden revealing
phrases, the balanced cadence of the sentences, the
single harp notes calling to some obscure emotion
of the soul — all these made their appeal and created
an imperishable memory.

And there is a point it is pertinent to make here,
in view of this new volume of "Notes on Life and
Letters": that it is doing Conrad a disservice to
characterize him as " a sea writer." One does not
call Turner a sea painter. The highest genius does
not shackle itself with such very trivial restrictions.

288 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

Some of the finest of Conrad's tales have nothing
whatever to do with the sea, notably "Heart of
Darkness/' "Under Western Eyes," and "An
Outcast of the Islands." If it be not misunderstood,
the present writer would Hke to say that going to
sea will have had very little influence upon the final
verdict of posterity upon Conrad's work. His
philosophy is his own and fundamentally antago-
nistic to the ideas of most seafarers. His technical
method is provoking to seamen, who have a very
different fashion of telling a tale — as different
in fact as the average ship master is from Charlie
Marlow. There is, as Conrad himself remarks,
nothing speculative in a sailor's mentality. The
meaning of his story is on the outside. Conrad
is entirely speculative. He tells the story almost
in absence of mind. He will bring you right up to a
moment of almost unendurable dramatic intensity
and then devote half a dozen pages to depicting
the psychological phenomena attendant upon it.
We who are gathered here consider the labour
justified by the unique results. The red-blooded
folk whose conception of drama is as rudimentary
as the struggle to enter a crowded subway train,
are naively infuriated when deprived of their precious
story. There are classes of novel readers who will
not have Conrad at any price. They lack patience
and are not compensated by any perfection of prose
diction which may inadvertently come under their

THE ARTIST PHILOSOPHER 289

notice. For them the donkeyman, the carpenter,
and storekeeper, mentioned earher in this essay,
were simply taciturn nonentities. For us they
are a bizarre trinity of lonely souls floating in mys-
terious proximity through a universe of ironic
destinies. For us they are the indistinct shadows
of men Uke Axel Heyst, Captain MacWhirr, and
Falk.

The present writer feels a special debt of gratitude
for these "Notes on Life and Letters" since they in-
clude a number of fugitive pieces, occasional contri-
butions to reviews, which he missed at the time,
owing to being in some distant harbour. There
is the very indignant disgression, for example, upon
the loss of the Titanic. And it is worthy of note
that when he deigns to speak of his contemporaries,
Conrad is exasperatingly unaware of the existence
of the gods in the best-selling universe. He has
much to say, on the contrary, of Henry James, of
Dostoyevsky, and of Anatole France. These articles
are exactly what one would expect from the author:
urbane and dignified criticism of one artist by an-
other. Conrad has been honoured similarly by
H. G. Wells, whose review of "Almayer's Folly"
and "An Outcast of the Islands" was a masterpiece
of critical insight.

Yet one returns again to the Prefaces. One has
here the feeling of being shown round the studio by
the master. This, he seems to say, is exactly how

290 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

it was done. He deprecates gently, and one hopes
sincerely, the formidable accretion of legendary ro-
manticism which has collected about his career.
We are to believe that these people in his books
never actually existed — they are the magnificent
fabrications of the author's brain. A hint here, a
whispered conversation there, a newspaper yarn
over yonder — and lo! fifteen years later Willems
or Falk or Razumov or Nostromo emerges from
obscurity and assumes an enigmatic attitude of
having existed since the dawn of time. This will
be very disappointing to those prosaic enthusiasts
who like to hear that all great characters in fiction
have their originals in history. And the present
writer must confess he had weakly imagined that
"The Secret Agent" was the happy result of a long-
past familiarity with the strange folk who hang
around legations and live in disreputable lodgings
off Greek Street or the Vauxhall Bridge Road.

And yet of what avail are these prying specula-
tions? There seems still to survive in us much
of that ghoulish predilection of the Middle Ages for
relics. We will go to a museum to look with venera-
tion upon the authentic trinkets of the illustrious
dead. So in these "Notes on My Books" one
must resist the temptation to linger over the per-
sonal revelations with vulgar curiosity. They are
for our information and comfort, but they hold no
anodyne for pain or elixir of youth whereby we may

THE ARTIST PHILOSOPHER 291

regain our lost illusions. They must in no case divert
our attention from one preface in particular — a
preface set apart by virtue of its history and inten-
tion. It would be much more just to call it the
confession of faith of a supreme master of prose.
The present writer is unable to speak of it without
emotion. It enshrines in resonant and perfect
phrases the secret convictions of his heart. It is
the crowning gift of a great artist; and when one
pauses to condense in a few words an adequate
comprehension of that artist's work, one turns
instinctively to this long-suppressed preface to
**The Nigger of the Narcissus." As one reads, one
recalls. The literary art, he says,

. . . must strenuously aspire to the plasticity of sculpture,
to the colour of painting, and to the magic suggestiveness of
music, which is the art of arts. And it is only through complete
unswerving devotion to the perfect blending of form and sub-
stance; it is only through an unremitting, never-discouraged
care for the shape and ring of sentences that an approach can
be made to plasticity, to colour and that the light of magic
suggestiveness may be brought to play for an evanescent instant
over the commonplace surface of words : of the old, old words,
worn thin, defaced by ages of careless usage.

And again, of the writer:

He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the
sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity,
and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with
all creation — and to the subtle but invincible conviction of
solidarity that knits together the lonliness of innumerable hearts,
to be solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in
illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men to each other, which
binds together all humanity — the dead to the living and the living
to the unborn.

292 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

So he sums it up. Beyond this, in placing the
bounds of the author's art, it is impossible to go.
One is permitted only to add, for the purpose of
supplying a fitting conclusion, the final paragraph.
The humble and industrious among us may smile
incredulously, yet toil on with a better heart, when
they read that our aim should be

. . . to arrest, for the space of a breath, the hands busy
about the work of the earth, and compel men entranced by the
sight of distant goals to glance for a moment at the surrounding
vision of form and colour, of sunshine and shadows; to make
them pause for a look, for a sigh, for a smile — such is the aim,
difficult and evanescent and reserved only for a very few to
achieve. But sometimes, by the deserving and the fortunate
even that task is accomplished. And when it is accomplished
— behold! — all the truth of life is there: a moment of vision,
a sigh, a smile — and the return to an eternal rest.

A PORT SAID MISCELLANY

There has come upon us, suddenly, one of those
inexpHcable lulls which make the experienced seafarer
in the Mediterranean recall bygone voyages out
East. It is as if the ship had run abruptly into
some sultry and airless chamber of the ocean, a
chamber whose cobalt roof has shut down tight, and
through which not a breath is moving. The smoke
from the funnel, of a sulphurous bronze colour, even
while our trail yet Hes somnolent in a long smear on the
horizon, now goes straight to the zenith. The iron
bulwarks are as hot as hand can bear, as the wester-
ing sun glows full upon the beam. Under the awnings
the troops He gasping on their rubber sheets, enduring
silently and uncomprehendingly, like dumb animals.
Far ahead, the escort crosses and recrosses our
course. Still farther ahead, a keen eye can detect
a slight fraying of the taut blue line of the horizon.
Signals break from the escort and are answered
from our bridge. I turn to a sergeant who is sham-
bling to and fro by the machine-room door, and in-
form him that Port Said is in sight, and that he will
be in harbour in an hour or so.

293

294 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

And then, just as suddenly as we entered, the
door of that heated chamber of the sea opens and
we pass out into a warm humid wind. The wind
and the news wake everybody. The soldiers,
who have encamped on our after deck during the
voyage, suddenly display a feverish activity. Rations
are packed, rifles are cleaned, and I am in the full
tide of popular favour because I permit oil-reservoirs
to be replenished in the machine room and furnish
those priceless fragments of old emery cloth which
give such a delectable and silvery gloss to the bolts.
Later, I am so popular that I could almost stand for
ParHament, for I tell the sergeant that each man
may fill his water-bottle with iced water. Which
they proceed to do at once, so that said water
gets red-hot before the moment of disembarka-
tion!

But take a look at these men on our after deck:
while we are coming up to Port Said. You have
never seen them before and you will not see them
again, for they are bound for Bagdad and beyond.
They are very representative, for they are of all
ages, races, and regiments. They are going to join
units which have been transferred. Three were
hours in the water when their ship was torpedoed.
Several have come overland across France and Italy,
and got most pleasantly hung up at entrancing
cities on the way. Others have come out of hospitals
and trenches in Macedonia and France and Flanders.

PORT SAID MISCELLANY 295

They are Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and EngHsh. The
sergeant, now thumbing a worn pocket-book, has
seen service in India, China, Egypt, and France.

Behind him on the hatch, is a boy of eighteen
who wears the uniform of the most famous regiment
in the British Army. He is small for his age, and
he has a most engaging smile. When I asked him
how on earth he got into the Army he explained
that he had **misriprisinted his age." He has a
chum, a gaunt Highlander, who scarcely opened
his Hps all the voyage, and who sat on the hatch
sewing buttons on their clothes, darning their stock-
ings, and reading a reHgious pamphlet entitled
"Doing it Now."

There is another sergeant, too, a young gentleman
going home to get a commission. He is almost to be
described as one apart, for he holds no converse
with the others. He walks in a mincing way, he
has a gold watch with a curb-chain on one wrist, a
silver identification plate and a silver slave-bangle
from Saloniki on the other, and an amethyst ring
on one of his fingers. As the Chief Engineer said
to me one day, he needed only a spear and a ring
through his nose to be a complete fighting man.
However, in this war it is unwise to make snap
judgments. I understand that this young gentle-
man has an aptitude for certain esoteric brain-
work of vast use in artillery. He never goes near
the firing-line at all. Our young friend Angus

296 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

MacFadden has that job. When the young gentle-
man with the slave-bangle and gold-mounted
fountain pen and expensive Kodak has figured out
certain calculations in his dug-out office, Angus, who
resembles an extremely warlike bell-hop, with his
gaunt Highland chum beside him, will scramble
up out of his trench, make a most determined rush
toward a given point, and, in short, complete the
job, whatever it may be.

Now it is all very well to talk about the triumphs
of mind over matter, but my interest is not with
the young gentleman at all. He may carry Omar
Khayyam in his kit. He may call the ** Shropshire
Lad" "topping poetry." He may (as he does)
borrow Swinburne from my book-shelf. My inter-
est is with Angus and his chums. I look out of
my machine-room window and watch them getting
ready to disembark. They are very amusing, with
their collapsible aluminium pannikins, their canvas
wash-basins and buckets, their fold-up shaving
tackle and telescopic tooth-brushes.

There is one tough old private of the Old Army
among them. He has the Egyptian and two South
African medals. He never seems to have any kit
to bother him. I see him in the galley, peeling
potatoes for their dinner, deep in conversation with
the pantry-man and smoking an Irish clay. He
knows all the twenty-one moves, as we say. Then
there is a very young man who reads love-stories

PORT SAID MISCELLANY 297

all the time, a rosy-cheeked lad with the Distin-
guished Service Medal ribbon on his tunic.

Another, almost as young, is tremendously in-
terested in refrigeration. He comes into my engine-
room and stares in rapt incredulity at the snow
on the machine. "I don't see why it doesn't
melt!" he complains, as if he had a grievance.
"How do you freeze.? if it isn't a rude question."

I explain briefly how we utilize the latent heat
of reevaporation peculiar to certain gaseous media,
in order to reduce the temperature. He turns on
me with a rush of frankness and bursts out, **But,
you know, that's all Greek to me!" Well, I suggest,
his soldiering's all Greek to me, come to that. He
laughs shortly, with his eyes on the ever-moving
engines, and says he supposes so. By and by
he begins to talk of his experiences in Macedonia.
He thinks the sea is beautiful, after the bare hot
gulches and ravines. He is so fair that the sun
has burned his face and knees pink instead of brown.
I ask him what he was doing before the war, and he
says his father has a seed farm in Essex and he him-
self was learning the business.

Meanwhile we have arrived at Port Said. The
engines stop and go astern violently, the pilot
comes alongside in a boat and climbs the rope ladder.
Just ahead is the breakwater, with a couple of motor
patrols keeping guard over the fairway. Our escort
puts on speed and goes in, for her job with us is done.

298 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

She has gone in to coal, and she will be ready in a few
hours to take another transport out. She and her
sisters are like us — they are never through. The
big ships may lie for days, or even weeks, in harbour.
We small fry have to hurry. Back and forth we ply
without ceasing. Sometimes we run ashore in our
haste, and so make less speed. Sometimes we smash
into each other in the dark, and haye to stagger back
to port and refit with all possible expedition. Some-
times, too, we go out and never come back, and no-
body save the authorities and our relatives hears
anything about it. To what end.? Well — and
herein lies my interest in those soldiers of the King
on the after deck — the one ultimate object we have
in view is to get Master Angus MacFadden and his
chums into that front-line trench, to keep them there
warm and fed, and fully supplied with every possible
assistance when they climb over the parapet to make
the aforesaid rush. Everything else, when you come
to think of it, is subordinate to that.

The ship goes at half speed now past the break-
water, a long gray finger pointing northward from
the beach. Half way along we pass the De Lesseps
statue on its high pedestal, the right hand flung out
in a grandiose gesture toward the supreme achieve-
ment of his life. The warm wind from the west-
ward is sending up the sea to break in dazzling white
foam on the yellow sand below the pink and blue
and brown bathing-huts. The breakwater is crowded

PORT SAID MISCELLANY 299

with citizens taking the air, for the walks of Port
Said are restricted and flavoured with the odours of
Arabian domesticity. We pass on, and the hotels
and Custom-House buildings come into view. All
around are the transients of the ocean, anchored
and for a moment at rest. Past the Canal Building
we steam, a pretentious stucco affair with three
green-tiled domes and deep Byzantine galleries.
Past also Navy House, a comely white building in
the Venetian style, recalling the Doge's Palace —
an illusion heightened by the fleet of patrols anchored
in front, busily getting ready to go out to work.

And then we stop, and manoeuvre, and go astern;
tugs whistle imperiously, motor-boats buzz around
us, ropes are hurriedly ferried across to buoys and
quays, and we are made fast and pulled into our
berth alongside of an immense vessel which has come
from the other side of the world with frozen meat
to feed Master Angus and his chums. But by this
time it is dark. The ochreous sheen on the sky
behind Port Said is darkening to purple and violet,
the stars are shining peacefully over us, and the
sergeant comes to ask for a lantern by which to finish
packing his kit.

It has been warm during the day, but now it is
stifling. We are, as I said, close alongside a great
ship. She extends beyond us and towers above us,
and even the warm humid breeze of Port Said in
August is shut out from us. Up from below comes

300 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

2l suffocating stench of hot bilge. The ship is in-
vaded by a swarm of Arab cargo-men, who begin
immediately to load us from our neighbour. Cargo
lights, of a ghastly blue colour, appear at the hatch-
ways. Angus and his chums take up their kits and
fall in on the bridge deck. Officers hurry to and fro.
Hatches are taken off, and the cold air of the holds
comes up in thin wisps of fog into the tropic night.
Winches rattle. Harsh words of French and Arabic
commingle with the more intelligible shouts of the
ship's officers. All night this goes on. All night
proceeds this preposterous traffic in frozen corpses,
amid the dim blue radiance of the cargo-clusters.
Hundreds upon hundreds of frozen corpses!

I go off watch at eight and, seated in a room
like a Turkish bath, I try to concentrate on the
letters which have come over the sea. I am seized
with a profound depression, arising, I suppose, from
the bizarre discrepancy between the moods communi-
cated by the letters and my own weariness. Most
letters are so optimistic in tone. They clap one on
the back and give one breezy news of the flowers in
New Jersey gardens, of the heat in New Orleans, of
bombs in London and reunions in EngHsh houses.
All very nice; but I have to get up at two, and the
thermometer over my bunk is now registering a
hundred Fahrenheit. An electric fan buzzes and
snaps in the corner and seems only to make the air
hotter. An Arab passes in the alleyway outside and

PORT SAID MISCELLANY 30T

calls to some one named Achmet in an unmelodious
howl. (All male Arabs are named Achmet
apparently.)

I sit in my pajamas, with the letters in my hand
and wonder how long it is going to last. Another
week or so and we shall have had two years of it.
Most of us have gone home on leave. Counting the
Commander, there are — let me see — four of us left
of the original crowd. It is over a year since I ap-
plied for leave. Nothing will come of it. I look
into the future and see myself, a gray elderly failure,
still keeping a six-hour shift on a Mediterranean
transport, my life spent, my friends and relatives
all dead, Angus and his chums gone west, and a new
generation coming out, with vigorous appetites for
fresh provisions.

And then the door opens and lets in a sHght uni-
formed figure with a grip in his hand and a familiar
smile on his face. Lets in also liberty, freedom,
pay-day, England, Home, and Beauty.

It is my relief, arrived at last!

II

We greet each other shyly, for the Chief and some of
the others are standing in the alleyway, with broad
grins on their faces at my look of flabbergasted be-
wilderment. An Arab porter comes along with a
big canvas bag of dunnage, which he dumps at our
feet.

302 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

**Why — ^what — how — ^when — did you get here?'*
I ask weakly.

"Train from Alexandria," he replies, sitting down
on the settee.

My kitten, a sandy little savage known as
O. Henry, jumps up and begins to make friends.
O. Henry is stroked and tickled, and Tommy
looks up at me with his old tolerant, bland, imper-
turbable smile.

"You, of all people!" I remark, looking at him
inanely.

"Aye, they sent me out,'^ he affirms. ''They
told me you were here. How's things?"

The others go away, still smiling, and I shut the
door. For this young chap, who has come across
Europe to relieve me, is an old shipmate. We were
on the Merovingian. We have been many voyages
to Rio and the Plate. We were always chums. In
some obscure fashion, we got on. Tommy is North
Country — dry, taciturn, reticent, slow to make
friends. He abhors bluffers. I like him. We
have never written, though, for it is a fact that
some friendships do not "carry" in a letter. They
are like some wines — ^they do not travel. For all I
knew, I was never to see him again. What of that ?
We had been chums and we understood each other.
I had often thought of him since Fd been out here
— a good little shipmate. And now here he was,
on my settee, smiling and tickling O. Henry just

PORT SAID MISCELLANY 303

where he Hkes to be tickled, and asking me to come
ashore with him.

Will I come ashore with him? Will I not? I
drag open drawers, fling out a white drill suit, and
begin to dress. I open the door and shout to the
messman to go and get a boat and bring my shoes
and some hot water. While I shave. Tommy relates
his adventures in a sketchy way. He has no gift of
tongues, but now and again he strikes out a phrase
that brings the picture before me. He has been
torpedoed. He was in the Malthusian when she was
"plugged." He was on watch, of course — ^Thirds
always are on watch when anything happens. I
used to tell him that he was the original of Brown-
ing's "Shadowy Third," he is so small, with delicate
hands and that charming, elusive, shadowy smile.
.. Oh, I remark, as I reach for the talcum powder,
he was torpedoed, was he? He nods and smiles at
O. Henry's trick of falling off the settee, head over
heels. And the poor old Malthusian too — ^what a
box of tricks she was, with her prehistoric pumps
and effervescent old dynamo — gone at last, eh?
Tommy says nothing about the catastrophe save
that he lost his gear. Then, he observes, he joined
the Polynesian as Third, having, of course, got him-
self fresh gear. Ah, and had I heard about the
Polynesian? She's gone too, he said, letting O.
Henry down to the floor by his tail. What ? Tor-
pedoed too? It must be a sort of habit with him.

304 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

Good Heavens! But no, says Tommy; she was
attacked, but she got away, and

"It was a funny thing," he adds meditatively;
and looks at me as though he couldn't make it out.

"What," I ask, "what happened?" as I look round
for my stick and cigar-case.

"Oh, ril tell you when we get ashore," he says;
and he rolls O. Henry into a ball and drops him on
my bunk.

"Come on, then. Sam! Got that boat?" '

A negro voice howls, "Yes, sah," and we go out
and down the ladder.

A three-quarter moon is coming up, hangs now
over Palestine, and Port Said, the ancient Pelusium,
takes on a serene splendour inconceivable to those
who have seen her only in the hard dusty glare of
noon-day. The harsh outhnes of the ships soften
to vague shadows touched with silver; the profound
gloom within the colonnades of the Canal building,
the sheen of the moonhght on green domes and gray
stucco walls make of it a fairy palace of mist and
emerald. Each motor-launch speeding past leaves
a broadening, heaving furrow of phosphorescence.
Each dip of our oars breaks the dark water into
an incredible swirl of boiling greenish-white radi-
ance.

Tommy and I sit side by side in the stern in
silence as the Arab boatman, in blue gown and
round white cap, pulls us up to the Custom-House

PORT SAID MISCELLANY 305

quay. We pass out at a side gate and find ourselves
in Egyptian darkness. Whether this is due to
mihtary exigencies or to a shortage of fuel, nobody
seems to know. The hotel buildings along the front
throw their shadows right across the Sharia el
Tegera, down which we pass until we reach the broad
dusty Rue el Nil, a boulevard running straight down
to the sea. We are bound for the Eastern Exchange
Hotel, familiarly known as "The Eastern." It is
the grand rallying-point of mariners east and west of
Suez. It is a huge gaunt structure of glass and iron,
built over to the curb of the street, and the arcade
under it is full of green chairs and tables, green
shrubs in enormous tubs, and climbing plants
twined about the iron stanchions. The lights are
shrouded in green petroleum cans, and one has the
illusion of sitting in the glade of some artificial
forest. Hotel waiters, in long white robes cut across
with brilliant scarlet sashes, and surmounted by
scarlet fezes, move noiselessly to and fro with trays
of drinks. An orchestra, somewhere beyond, plays
a plaintive air.

All around are uniforms — naval and military,
British, French, Itahan, and so forth. It is here,
I say, that East and West do meet. Here the
skipper from Nagasaki finds an old shipmate just in
from New Orleans. Here a chief engineer, burned
brown and worn thin by a summer at Basra, drinks
with a friend bound east from Glasgow to Rangoon.

3o6 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

Here the gossip of all the ports of the Seven Seas
changes hands over the httle tables under the dim
green-shaded lights. Outside, beyond the screen
of verdure, a carriage will go by stealthily in the
dust, a cigar glowing under the hood. Itinerant
salesmen of peanuts in glass boxes, beads, Turkish
delight, postals, cigarettes, news-sheets, postage
stamps, and all the other passenger junk, pass to and
fro. A native conjurer halts as we sit down, sadly
produces a dozen lizards from an apparently empty
fez, and passes on as I look coldly upon his peri-
patetic legerdemain. Here and there parties of
residents sit round a table — a French family, perhaps,
or Italian, or Maltese, or Greek, or Hebrew, or
Syrian — for they are all to be found here in Pelusium,
the latter making money out of their conquerors,
just as, I dare say, they did in Roman times. Papa
is smoking a cigarette; Mamma is sitting back
surveying the other denizens of the artificial forest
through her lorgnon; the young ladies converse with
a couple of youthful "subs" in khaki, and a bare-
legged boy, in an enormous pith hat like an inverted
bath, is hagghng over half a piastre with a vendor
of peanuts. Tommy and I sit in the shadow of a
shrub and I order gin and Hme-juice. He wants
beer, but there is no beer — only some detestable
carbonated bilge-water at half a dollar (ten piastres)
the bottle.

And soldiers go by continually to and from the

PORT SAID MISCELLANY 307

cafes and canteens. Many are Colonials, and their
wide-brimmed hats decorated with feathers give
them an extraordinarily dissipated air. There is
something very un-English about these enormous,
loose-limbed, roHing fighting men, with their cheeks
the colour of raw beef and their truculent eyes
under their wide hats. They remind me at times
of the professional soldiers of my school-days, who
dressed in scarlet and gold and were a race apart.
As they pass us, in twos and threes and singly,
slouching and jmgling their spurs, and roll off into
darkness again I think of Master Angus MacFadden
and his chums, and I wonder what the future holds
for us all. Then I hear Tommy talking and I began
to Hsten.

No use trying to tell the story as he told it. Who-
ever thinks he can is the victim of an illusion.
Tommy's style, like his personality, is not literary.
I often wonder, when I think of the sort of Hfe he
has led, how he comes to express himself at all. For
he often startles me with some queer semi-articulate
flash of intuition. A direct challenge to Life! As
when he said, looking up at me as we leaned over
the bulwarks and watched the sunrise one morning
in the Caribbean, "Yo' know, I haven't had any
life."

Well, as I said, he and I are chums on some mys-
teriously taciturn. North Country principle that
won't bear talking about! And I must tell the

3o8 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

story in my own way, merely quoting a phrase now
and then. I owe him that much because, you see,
he was there.

Ill

That voyage he made in the Polynesian was her
usual London-to-South-American-ports. And noth-
ing happened until they were homeward bound
and making Ushant. It was a glorious day, as
clear as it ever is in northern waters, and the Third
Mate was astonished to see through his glasses what
he took to be land. Ushant already! As he looked
he saw a flash and his wonder deepened. He told
himself, well, he'd be blowed. A tremendous bang
a hundred yards abeam of the Polynesian nearly
shook him overboard. It had come at last, then!

The Old Man came from his room, running side-
ways, his face set in a kind of spasm, and stood by
the rail, clutching it as if petrified. The Third Mate,
a friend of Tommy's, pointed and handed the binoc-
ulars just in time for the Old Man to see another
flash. The mooring telegraph clanged and jangled.
The Third Mate ran to the telphone and was listen-
ing, when the second shell, close to the bows, ex-
ploded on the water and made him drop the receiver.
Then he heard the Old Man order the helm over —
over — over, whirling his arm to emphasize the vital
need of putting it hard over. A few moments of
tense silence, and then, with a roar that nearly

PORT SAID MISCELLANY 309

split all their ear-drums, the Polynesian s six-inch
anti-raider gun loosed off at nine thousand yards.

So you must envisage this obscure naval engage-
ment on that brilHant summer day in the green
Atlantic. Not a ripple to spoil the aim, not a cloud
in the sky, as the two gunners, their sleeves rolled
to the shoulders, their bodies heaving, thrust a
fresh shell and cartridge into the breech, shoved in
the cap, and swung the block into place with the soft
"cluck'' of steel smeared with vaseline. As the
ship veers, the gun is trained steady on the gray
dot. Nine thousand and fifty, no deflection —
"Stand away!" There is another roar, and the
gunner who has stood away now stands with his
feet apart, his elbows out, staring with intense
concentration through his glasses.

Down below, the engine-room staff, which in-
cluded Tommy doing a field-day on the spare gener-
ator, were clustered on the starting platform. The
expansion links had been opened out full — any
locomotive driver will show you what I mean —
and the Polynesian' s engines, four thousand seven
hundred horse-power indicated, driven by steam
at two hundred pounds to the square inch from her
four Scotch boilers, were turning eighty-nine revolu-
tions per minute and making very good going for
her, but nothing to write home about, when a modern
submersible cruiser doing sixteen knots on the
surface was pelting after her. The tremendous

3IO HARBOURS OF MEMORY

explosions of the six-inch gun discouraged conver-
sation.

The Chief Engineer, a tall man with a full chest-
nut moustache and a stern contemptuous expression
born of his hatred of sea-life, was striding up and
down the plates. The Second appeared, like Ariel,
around, above, below, intent on sundry fidgets
of his own, and whistling — nobody knew why. The
Fourth was in the stokehold and back in the engine-
room every ten minutes. The Fifth, as though
he had been naughty and was being punished by
that stern man with the four gold-and-purple rings
on his sleeve, was standing with his face to the wall,
big rubber navy phone-receivers on his ears and his
eyes fixed in a rapt saintly way on two ground-
glass discs above him, one of which was aglow and
bore the legend More Revolutions, The other.
Less Revolutions, was dull and out of use. So he
stood, waiting for verbal orders.

All the revolutions possible were being supplied,
for the safety-valves were lifting with an occasional
throaty flutter. Unexpectedly the Second would
appear from the tunnel, where he had been feeling
the stern gland, and would hover lovingly over the
thrust-block, whistling, amid the clangour of four
thousand seven hundred horse-power: "Love me, and
the world is mine."

Suddenly all was swallowed up, engulfed, in one
heart-shattering explosion on deck. It was so tre-

PORT SAID MISCELLANY 311

mendous that the Fifth's head involuntarily darted
out from the receivers and he looked sharply at the
Chief, who was standing stock-still with his long legs
apart, his hands in his coat pockets, staring over his
shoulder with stern intentness into vacancy. The
telephone bell brayed out a call and the Fifth fitted
his head once again to the receiver. "Yes, sir!"
he sang out; and then, to the others, "We're gainin'
on her! We're gainin' on her!" Tommy goes on
methodically with his dynamo. He is close at hand
when wanted; ready, resourceful, devoid of panic.
The excitement is on deck, where the shell has
struck the house amidships, blown the galley
ranges and bakehouse ovens overboard, killed three
men outright, and left two more mere moving hor-
rors of the slaughter-house floor. Another, a scul-
lion, with his hand cut off at the wrist, is running
round and round, falling over the wreckage, and
pursued by a couple of stewards with bandages and
friar's balsam.

And on that gray dot, now nine thousand five
hundred yards astern, there is excitement, no doubt,
for it seems authentic that the Polynesian s third shot
hit the forward gun-mounting, and the list caused by
this, heavy things slewing over, the damage to the
deck, the rupture of certain vital oil-pipes, and the
wounds of the crew, would account for the Polynesian,
with her fourteen-point-seven knots, gaining on U—
ggg, supposed to have sixteen knots on the surface.

312 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

On the bridge of the Polynesian, too, there is ex-
citement of sorts. The Chief Mate, who has been
rushing about, helping the ammunition carriers,
then assisting the stewards with their rough surgery,
then up on the bridge again, has come up and is
prancing up and down, every now and then looking
hard at the Old Man, who stares through the tele-
scope at the gray dot.

Something awful had happened. When that shell
hit the ship, the Old Man had called out hoarsely,
** That's enough — oh, enough — boats!" and the Chief
Mate, to the horror of the young Third Mate, who
told Tommy about it, grabbed the Old Man round
the waist, whirled him into the chartroom, and
slammed the door upon them both. The Third
Mate says he saw, through the window, the Chief
Mate's fist half an inch from the Old Man's nose,
the Old Man looking at it in gloomy silence, and the
Chief Mate's eyes nearly jumping out of his
head as he argued and threatened and implored.
'*. . . Gainin' on her," was all the Third Mate
could hear, and ". . . For God's sake, sir!" and
such-like strong phrases. So the Third Mate says.
And then they came out again, and the Mate tele-
phoned to the engine room.

IV

The company is dwindling now, for, as Tommy gulps
his drink and orders two more, it is on the stroke of

PORT SAID MISCELLANY 313

nine, when the bars close, and folks are melting
group by group into the darkness. Some are bound
for home, some for "Eldorado,'' a dusty barn where
one watches dreadful melodramatic films and faints
with the heat. The lights are turned still lower. The
few shops which have been open in a stealthy way
now shut up close. The moonlight throws sharp
blue-black shadows on the white dust of the Rue el
Nil. The orchestra fades away; chairs are stacked
between the tubs, and reproachful glances are cast
upon the dozen or so of us who still Hnger in the
gloom.

I become aware that Tommy, in his own odd little
semi-articulate fashion, is regarding me as though
he had some extraordinary anxiety on his mind.
That is the way his expression strikes me. As
though he had had some tremendous experience
and didn't know what to make of it. I remember
seeing something like it in the face of a youth, re-
ligiously brought up, who was Hstening for the first
time to an atheist attempting to shake the founda-
tions of his faith. And while I ruminate upon this
unusual portent in Tommy's physiognomy, he
plunges into the second part of his story. It has its
own appeal to those who love and understand the
sea.

For the rest of the day the Polynesian s course
was a series of intricate convolutions on the face of
the Atlantic. As the Third Mate put it in his lively

314 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

way, you could have played it on a piano. Owing to
the wireless room having been partially demolished
they were out of touch with the world, and the Com-
mander felt lonely. He even regretted for a while
that he had not retired. Was just going to when
the war came. He was sixty years old, and had
been an easy-going skipper for twenty years now.
This — and he wiped his moist face with his handker-
chief— ^this wasn't at all what he had bargained for
when he had volunteered to carry on "for the dura-
tion of the war." Men dead and dying and muti-
lated, ship torn asunder. He sat on his settee and
stared hard at the head and shoulders of the man
at the wheel, adumbrated on the ground-glass win-
dow in front of him. He had turned sick at the

sight down there

But the Polynesian was still going. Not a bolt,
rivet, plate, or rod of her steering and propeUing
mechanism had been touched, and she was gal-
loping northwest by west at thirteen knots. The
Commander hoped for a dark night, for in his present
perturbed state the idea of being torpedoed at night
was positively horrible. The Brohdingnagian, now,
was hit at midnight and sunk in three minutes with
all hands but two. He wiped his face again. He
felt that he wasn't equal to it.

Y It was dark. All night it was dark and moonless.
All night they galloped along up-Channel. All
night the Old Man walked the bridge, watching the

PORT SAID MISCELLANY 315

blackness ahead. At four o'clock the Mate came
on watch and the Old Man felt that he must lie
down. He was more than sixty years old, remember,
and he had been on his feet for eighteen hours.
The Chief Mate, who had been strangely shy since
his outrageous behaviour, merely remarked that it
looked as if it might be thick presently, and began to
pace to and fro.

What happened — if anything did happen — no-
body seemed to know; but Tommy, who came off at
four, and was enjoying a pipe, a cup of cocoa, and a
game of patience in his room, was suddenly flung
endways against his wardrobe, and a series of
grinding crashes, one of which sent his porthole glass
in a burst of fragments over his bedplace, buckled
the plates of the ship's side. He remembered that
the wardrobe door flew open as he sprang up, and
his derby hat bounced to the floor.

He at once skipped down below, where he found
the Second and Chief trying to carry out a number
of rapid, contradictory orders from the telegraph.
And as he joined them the telegraph whirled from
"Full astern" to "Stand by," and stopped. They
stood by. Tommy was told to go and finish
"changing over," which involves opening and shutting
several mysterious valves. Having achieved this,
he took up his station by the telegraph.

The Chief, clad in a suit of rumpled but elegant
pink-and-saff'ron-striped pajamas, prowled to and

3i6 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

fro in front of the engines like one of the larger carni-
vora in front of his cage. The Second, with the
sleeves of his coat rolled up, as if he were a conjuror
and wished to show there was no deception, pro-
duced a cigarette from his ear, a match from an
invisible ledge under the log-desk, and then caused
himself to disappear into the stokehold, whistling a
tune at one time very popular in Dublin called **Mick
McGilligan's Daughter Mary Anne." He returned
in the same mysterious fashion, smoking with much
enjoyment, and reporting greaser, firemen, and trim-
mers all gone up on deck.

And so they waited, those three, and waited, and
waited; and the dawn came up, ineffably tender,
and far up above them through the skylights they
saw the stars through the fog turn pale, and still there
was no sign, the telegraph finger pointing, in its mute
peremptory way, at "Stand by." They were standing
by.

And at length it grew to be past endurance. The
Chief spoke sharply into the telephone. Nothing.
Suddenly he turned and ordered Tommy to go up
and see what was doing. The Second, coming in
from the stokehold, reported water in the cross-
bunker, but the doors were down. So Tommy went
up the long ladders and out on deck and stood stock-
still before the great experience of his life. For they
were alone on the ship, those three. The boats
were gone. There was no sound, save the banging

PORT SAID MISCELLANY 317

of the empty blocks and the gurgle and slap of the
sea against her sides.

For a moment, Tommy said, he "had no heart."
The sheer simplicity of the thing unmanned him,
as well it might. He hadn't words — Gone! Behind
the horror lay another horror, and it was the rem-
embrance of this ultimate apprehension that I saw in
his face to-night. And then he threw himself back-
ward (a North Country football trick), turned, and
rushed for the ladder. The other two, down below,
saw him there, his eyes feverish, his face dark and
anxious, his usually low voice harsh and strident, as
he prayed them to drop everything and come up
quick — come on — and his voice trailed off into huski-
ness and heavy breathing.

When they came up, which happened immediately,
four steps at a time, they found him sprawled against
the bulwarks, his chin on his hands, looking as
though to fix the scene for ever on his brain. And
they looked too, and turned faint, for there, far
across the darkling sparkle of the sea, were the
boats, and on the sky-line a smear of smoke. So
they stood, each in a characteristic attitude —
Tommy asprawl on the rail, the Second half way up
the bridge-deck ladder, one hand on his hip, the Chief
with his hands behind him, his long legs widely
planted, his head well forward, scowling. They
were as Tommy put it, "in a state.'' It wasn't, you
know, the actual danger; it was the carrying away

3i8 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

of' their faith in the world of Hving men. Good God!
And I imagine the prevaiHng emotion in their heart
at this moment was instinct in the lad's query to
me — "What was the use of goin' back, or making a
fight of it, if that was all they thought of us ?'' And
then the Polynesian recalled them from speculations
as to the ultimate probity of the human soul by giv-
ing a sudden lunge forward. She was sinking.

For a moment, Tommy says, they were "in a
state." I should imagine they were. They began
running round and round the deck, picking up pieces
of wood and dropping them in a shame-faced manner.
Suddenly the Chief remembered the raft — an unfor-
tunate structure of oil-barrels and hatches. It was
on the foredeck, a frowsy incumbrance devised by
the Mate in a burst of ingenuity against the fatal
day. When the three of them arrived on the fore-
deck their hopes sank again. A single glance showed
the impossibility of lifting it without steam on the
winches. They stood round it and dehberated in
silence, tying on life-belts which they had picked up
on the bridge deck. The Polynesian gave another
lunge, and they climbed on the raft and held tight.

The Polynesian was in her death throes. She had
been cut through below the bridge, and the water was
filling the cross-bunker and pressing the air in Num-
ber Two hold up against the hatches. While they
sat there waiting, the tarpaulins on the hatch bal-
looned up and burst like a gun-shot, releasing the

PORT SAID MISCELLANY 319

air imprisoned within. She plunged again, and the
sea poured over her bulwarks and cascaded around
them. The raft shd forward against a winch, skin-
ning the Second's leg against a wheel-guard. They
held on.

Now, it is perfectly simple in theory to sit on a
raft and allow a ship to sink under you. The ship
sinks, and the raft, retaining its buoyancy, floats.
Quite simple, in theory. In practice, however,
many factors tend to vitiate the simplicity of it.
Indeed, it becomes so difficult that only by the mercy
of God could anybody attempt it and survive.
The fore deck of the Polynesian was like the fore
deck of most ships, cluttered up with hatch comb-
ings, winches, ventilator-cowls, steam-pipes, masts,
derricks, bollards, snatch-blocks, dead-eyes, ladders,
and wire-rope drums. Look forward from the prom-
enade next time you make a trip, and conceive it.
As the Polynesian subsided, she wallowed. Her cen-
tre of gravity was changing every second, and the
raft, with its three serious passengers, was charging
to and fro as if it were alive and trying to escape.
It carried away a ventilator, and then, for one horri-
ble instant, was caught in the standing rigging and
canted over. A rush to starboard released it, and the
next moment it was free. Only the windlass on the
forecastle-head was now above water forward.

They saw nothing more of her. Not that she
vanished all at once, but the sucking whirlpools

320 HARBOURS OF MEMORY

in which the raft was turning over and reeling back
on them kept them fully occupied. And when at
last they had coughed up the sea-water and wiped
their eyes and looked at each other as they floated in
the gentle swell of a smiling summer sea, she was
gone. Only one thing destroyed their peace and
stood up before them like a spectre; she was lying
at the bottom, with her telegraph at "Stand by." The
deathless sporting spirit of the race was expressed in
these words: **You know, if it hadn't been for that,
it was a joke, man!"

The moon rides high over Pelusium as we go back
to the ship. Tommy and I will keep the morning
watch together for once and talk over old times.
To-morrow I shall go through the hot white dust
of the Rue el Nil and be paid off in the consul's office
for my two years' labour. There is a mail boat
next week, and perhaps I shall board her, passenger-
fashion, and go across the blue Mediterranean,
through sunny France, across the Enghsh Channel
where the Polynesian stands by for ever, up through
Sussex orchards and over Surrey downs. And
perhaps, as I idle away the autumn in the dim beauty
of the Essex fenland, and as we drive in the pony-
cart through the lanes, we shall stop and the chil-
dren will say, **If you stand up, you can see the sea."

Perhaps. Who knows?

THE END

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