Part 6 (1/2)
At last, having decided, he shouted orders, there was a burst of activity, and we headed for the bad place. Soon we should know.
The _Judy_ began to plunge alarmingly. The incoming rollers at times swept her along with a rush, and Yeo had his hands full. Her bowsprit yawned, rose and fell hurriedly, the _Judy's_ unsteady dexter pointing in nervous excitement at what was ahead of her. But Yeo held her to it, though those heavy following seas so demoralized the _Judy_ that it was clear it was all Yeo could do to keep her to her course. Columns of spray exploded ahead, driving in on us like shot.
”Look out!” cried Yeo. I looked. Astern was a grey hill, high over us, fast overtaking us, the white turmoil of its summit already streaming down its long slope. It accelerated, as if it could see it would soon be too late. It nearly was, but not quite. A cataract roared over the p.o.o.p, and Yeo vanished. The _Judy_, in a panic, made an attempt at a move which would have been fatal then; but she was checked and her head steadied. I could do nothing but hold the lady firm and grasp a pin in its rail. The flood swept us, brawling round the gear, foundering the hatch. For a moment I thought it was a case, and saw nothing but maniacal water. Then the foam subsided to clear torrents which flung about violently with the s.h.i.+p's movement. The men were in the rigging.
Yeo was rigid at the wheel, his eyes on the future. I could not see the other pa.s.senger till his wife screamed, and then I saw him. Two figures rolled in a flood that was pouring to the canting of the deck, and one of them desperately clutched at the other for aid. But the other was the dead skipper, washed from his place on the hatch.
We were over the bar again, and the deck became level. But it remained the bottom of a shallow well in which floated with indifference the one-time master of the _Judy_, face downwards, and who presently stranded amids.h.i.+ps. Our pa.s.senger reclined on the vacated hatch, his eyes wide with childish and unspoken terror, and fixed on his wife, whose ministering hands he fumbled for as does a child for his mother's when he wakes at night after a dream of evil.
XII. The Lascar's Walking-Stick
The big face of Limehouse Church clock stared through the window at us.
It is rather a senseless face, because it is so full of cracks that you can find any hour in it you do not want, especially when in a hurry.
But n.o.body with a life that had not wide areas of waste leisure in it would ever visit Hammond now, where he lives in a tenement building, in a room which overlooks the roofs and railway arches of Limehouse. Just outside his window the tower of the church is rather too large and too close.
Hammond has rooms in the tenement which are above the rest of the street. He surmounts many layers of dense humanity. The house is not the usual model dwelling. Once it knew better days. Once it was the residence of a s.h.i.+powner, in the days when the London docks were full of clippers, and s.h.i.+powners husbanded their own s.h.i.+ps and liked to live near their work. The house has a broad and n.o.ble staircase, having a carved handrail as wide as a span; but much of the old and carved interior woodwork of the house is missing--firewood sometimes runs short there--and the rest is buried under years of paint and dirt.
Hammond never knows how many people share the house with him. ”I've tried to find out, but the next day one of 'em has died and two more are born.” It is such a hive that most of Hammond's friends gave up visiting him after discovering in what place he had secluded himself; but there he stays with his books and his camera, his pubs and his lightermen, Jews, Chinamen, sailors, and dock-labourers. Occasionally a missionary from the studios of Hempstead or Chelsea goes down to sort out Hammond from his surroundings, and to look him over for damage, when found.
”Did I ever tell you about Jabberjee?” Hammond asked me that afternoon.
No, he hadn't. Some of Hammond's work, which he had been showing me, was scattered over the floor, and he stepped among the litter and came and looked through the window with me. ”A funny thing happened to me here,” he said, ”the other evening. A pal of mine died. The bills which advertise for the recovery of his body--you can see 'em in any pub about here--call him Joseph Cherry, commonly called Ginger. He was a lighterman, you know. There was a sing-song for the benefit of his wife and kids round at the George and Dragon, and I was going.
”On my way I stopped to look in at my favourite p.a.w.nshop. Do you know the country about here? Well, you have to mind your eye. You never know what will turn up. I never knew such a place. Not all of Limehouse gets into the Directory, not by a lot. It is bound on the east by China, on the north by Greenland, on the south by Cape Horn, and on the west by London Bridge.
”The main road near here is the foresh.o.r.e of London. There's no doubt the sea beats on it--unless you are only a Chelsea chap, with your eyes bunged up with paint. All sorts of things drift along. All sorts of wreckage. It's like finding a cocoanut or a palm hole stranded in a Cornish cove. The stories I hear--one of you writer fellers ought to come and stay here, only I suppose you are too busy writing about things that really matter. You are like the bright youths in the art schools, drawing plaster casts till they don't know life when they see it.
”Well, about this p.a.w.nshop. It's a sort of pocket--you know those places on the beach where a lot of flotsam strands--oceanic treasure-trove. I suppose the currents, for some reason sailors could explain, eddy round this p.a.w.nshop and leave things there. That p.a.w.nshop is the luckiest corner along our beach, and I stopped to turn over the sea litter.
”Of course, there was a lot of chronometers, and on top of a pile of 'em was a carved cocoanut. South Sea Islands, I suppose. Full of curious involuted lines--a mist of lines--with a face peering through the mist, if you looked close enough. Rows of cheap watches hung on their chains, and there was a lot of second-hand meerschaum pipes, and a walrus tusk, carved about a little. What took my eye was an old Chinese bowl, because inside it was a little jade idol--a fearful little wretch, with mother-o'-pearl eyes. It would squat in your thoughts like a toad, that idol--eh, where does Jabberjee come in?
Well, here he comes.
”I didn't know he was coming at all, you understand. I shouldn't have jumped more if the idol had winked at me.
”There stood Jabberjee. I didn't know that was his name, though. He was christened Jabberjee after the trouble, by a learned Limehouse schoolboy, who wore spectacles. Do I make myself clear?”
I murmured that I was a little dense, but time might carry out improvements. Hammond was talking on, though, without looking at me.
”There the Lascar was. Lots of 'em about here, you know. He was the usual bundle of bones and blue cotton rags, and his gunny bags flapped on his stick legs like banners. He looked as uncertain as a candle-flame in a draught. Perhaps he was sixteen. I dunno. Maybe he was sixty. You can't tell these Johnnies. He had a shaven cranium, and his tight scalp might have been slipped over the bony bosses of his head with a shoehorn.
”I don't know what he was saying. He cringed, and said something very quickly; I thought he was speaking of something he had concealed on his person. Smuggled goods, likely. Tobacco.
”Looking over his shoulder, wis.h.i.+ng he would go away, I saw a policeman in the dusk at the opposite corner, with his eye on us.
”Then I could see something was concealed under the Lascar's flimsies.
He seemed trying to keep it quiet. He kept on talking, and I couldn't make out what he was driving at. I was looking at his clothes, wondering what the deuce he had concealed there. At last something came out of his rags. Talk about making you jump! It really did look like the head of a snake. It was, too, but attached to a walking-stick--sort of handle. A scaly head it was, in some s.h.i.+ny material. Its eyes were like a pair of rubies. They picked up the light somehow, and glittered.