“We leave as soon as our engineers are ready. They’ve uncoupled something below, but they won’t be long. Well, what will you do then? Go on with us?”
“What? Yes, if I may.”
“Well. It’s your affair. I suppose it’s in order. We’ll know some day. Only thing to do is what seems best at the time. I’ll see you at dinner.”
That night at dinner hardly a general word went across the table. The captain was new to the ship, and he presided over the soup as though he were not sure that the others would care for the stuff. “Too much onion in this, steward. Remember that.” Sinclair’s stern interest was fixed where nothing could be seen. He was merely performing a duty in eating, and he picked up his cap from a sideboard and left the saloon as though glad to get out of it. The captain and the chief engineer then conversed in undertones of some technical matters. Jimmy wished to learn to where in the world the ship was bound, but he had to do without it.
Yet, when he got away from that confinement with strangers who were talking apart and confidentially of much which he did not understand and more that he did not hear, and was alone on deck, their destination, wherever it was, did not loom importantly. It was incidental. They were outward bound. Enough for one day; and one day at a time. He leaned on the lee-rail, amidships, watching a distant light. That was the last spark of the old interests. It was low down. It was a wonder that it could persist. Sometimes it did go out, but reappeared, to attach and remind them. Then a big warm presence bringing the smell of a cheroot was beside him. He did not hear it approach. He smelt it first. A dark night. It said nothing. Occasionally the cigar glowed. The chief engineer? They didn’t know each other yet. That warm shadow also seemed to be contemplating the light. It remained there in solid ease for some time, but it did not speak. Then it stood up, and stretched. “Aye?” it soliloquised interrogatively; and then, as though in confirmation, “aye”; and that was all. Its place was empty.
So this, conjectured Jimmy, groping over his clammy door for its handle, is romance. There’s no fuss about it. You wouldn’t know it, unless you were told what it was. Altogether casual and insignificant; as if it were as silly as life itself.
XII
Gillespie extolled the Scots. His hardihood left nothing else to talk about. The steward brisked about with the morning dishes. Jimmy, in a way that was new to him, noticed that the odour of the coffee had the effect of a clarion, of a hymn of praise. It smelt better than it tasted. The mornings were good. And this the Bay of Biscay, too! The seas were actually chanting. A stray beam of shine from the skylight swayed leisurely to and fro across the tablecloth; the water-bottle was in its track and answered the light by decorating the table linen with the spectrum. A rum thing, but as soon as you approached the matter of the resounding ballads and the tall tales, it was like this. On the whole, Colet thought he preferred it as it was. Look at Gillespie, that bold seaman! Or Hale, whose downcast thoughts seemed absorbed into the emptiness of his plate! Easygoing and friendly. No deeps of evil and heroism there. Hale hardly ever spoke but his words then certainly hinted that he knew what he was talking about. Gillespie continued to admonish Sinclair about the Scots, and the chief officer was smiling derisively.
“Where would you have been without them? Answer that now. Talk of your Shakespeare! Aye, he wasn’t so bad. Not so bad. But there’s Burns. There’s a man for ye. Have ye the like of him? And who did all that was worth doing, marine engines, the best ships, whisky, now?”
“And macadam, Gillespie. Don’t forget that.”
Jimmy had heard all this before. It was probably as constant at a ship’s mess-table as bloaters. Gillespie’s face was big and comforting, and its bronze made his grey eyes, and his crimped and wiry hair, oddly pale and noticeable; his back was as broad as the mahogany. Sinclair had confided to Colet that the chief engineer could smell in his sleep a minor fault in the engine-room and go to it by divination. Sinclair handsomely confessed now, pulling bread apart, that he would not so strongly object to the Scots if they could talk English.
“Man! I tell ye that Scotch is the original English, anyway.”
“Of course, when we were hairy savages, living on heather tops. Before we learned better manners. I say, Gillespie. Didn’t I ever tell you? There was a Scotchman, an Aberdonian, I sailed with once. He was an engineer, on his first voyage. I had to guess twice before I knew what it was he wished to tell me, but couldn’t pronounce properly. Well, we were coaling out East, and this fellow-countryman of yours was at a hatch with the Chinese Number One. They were rowing. Pidgin-English and your kind of English. You never heard such a shocking noise. The work was getting all balled up. Nothing to do with me, of course, but I strolled along to hear what the trouble was. The young engineer tried to tell me, but the Chink broke in. He was so jolly wild. He pointed at your countryman. ‘Look!’ he said. ‘No speakee English. No speakee Chinee. All same bloody Scotchman.’ ”
Sinclair went out of the room triumphant while Gillespie was considering a shot at him. The captain took no part in the discussion. “He’s a lively young man,” he remarked to the engineer. “You know, Gillespie, I’m told that I’m a Scot, or that I was.”
Thus that day drew insensibly towards noon.
