Part 12 (1/2)

Apparently his friend had written a book. Tommy, like a practical seaman, went to the heart of the matter. He went into the shop and bought the book. He fell into talk with the bookseller, who had read the book. He told the bookseller that he had known the author, and that for years they had served together on the same vessels at sea. He told how the writer, who was the former second engineer of the _Fernfield_, had done many things for the little Dutch lad whose own father had died at sea. Then came another surprise.

”I believe you're one of the characters in the story,” said the bookseller.

It was so. The book was ”Casuals of the Sea,” the author, William McFee, who had been a steams.h.i.+p engineer for a dozen years; and Drevis Jonkers found himself described in full in the novel as ”Drevis Noordhof,” and playing a leading part in the story. Can you imagine the simple sailor's surprise and delight? Pleased beyond measure, in his soft Dutch accent liberally flavoured with c.o.c.kney he told the bookseller how Mr. McFee had befriended him, had urged him to go on studying navigation so that he might become an officer; and that though they had not met for several years he still receives letters from his friend, full of good advice about saving his money, where to get cheap lodgings in Brooklyn, and not to fall into the common error of sailors in thinking that Hoboken and Pa.s.syunk Avenue are all America. And Tommy went back to his yacht chuckling with delight, with a copy of ”Casuals of the Sea” under his arm.

Here my share in the adventure begins. The bookseller, knowing my interest in the book, hastened to tell me the next time I saw him that one of the characters in the story was in New York. I wrote to Tommy asking him to come to see me. He wrote that the _Alvina_ was to sail the next day, and he could not get away. I supposed the incident was closed.

Then I saw in the papers that the _Alvina_ had been halted in the Narrows by a United States destroyer, the Government having suspected that her errand was not wholly neutral. Rumour had it that she was on her way to the Azores, there to take on armament for the house of Romanoff. She was halted at the Quarantine Station at Staten Island, pending an investigation.

Then enters the elbow of coincidence. Looking over some books in the very same bookshop where Tommy had bought his friend's novel, I overheard another member of the _Alvina's_ crew asking about ”Casuals of the Sea.” His chum Tommy had told him about his adventure, and he, too, was there to buy one. (Not every day does one meet one's friends walking in a 500-page novel!) By the never-to-be-sufficiently-admired hand of chance I was standing at Joe Hogan's very elbow when he began explaining to the book clerk that he was a friend of the Dutch sailor who had been there a few days before.

So a few days later, behold me on the Staten Island ferry, on my way to see Tommy and the _Alvina_.

I'm afraid I would always desert the office if there's a plausible excuse to b.u.m about the waterfront. Is there any pa.s.sion in the breast of mankind more absorbing than the love of s.h.i.+ps? A tall Cunarder putting out to sea gives me a keener thrill than anything the Polo Grounds or the Metropolitan Opera can show. Of what avail a meeting of the Authors' League when one can know the sights, sounds, and smells of West or South Street? I used to lug volumes of Joseph Conrad down to the West-Street piers to give them to captains and first mates of liners, and get them to talk about the ways of the sea. That was how I met Captain Claret of the _Minnehaha_, that prince of seamen; and Mr. Pape of the _Orduna_, Mr. Jones of the _Lusitania_ and many another. They knew all about Conrad, too. There were five volumes of Conrad in the officers' cabins on the _Lusitania_ when she went down, G.o.d rest her. I know, because I put them there.

And the Staten Island ferry is a voyage on the Seven Seas for the landlubber, After months of office work, how one's heart leaps to greet our old mother the sea! How drab, flat, and humdrum seem the ways of earth in comparison to the hardy and austere life of s.h.i.+ps! There on every hand go the gallant shapes of vessels--the _James L. Morgan_, dour little tug, shoving two barges; _Themistocles_, at anchor, with the blue and white Greek colours painted on her rusty flank; the _Comanche_ outward bound for Galveston (I think); the _Ascalon_, full-rigged s.h.i.+p, with blue-jerseyed sailormen out on her bowsprit snugging the canvas.

And who is so true a lover of the sea as one who can suffer the ultimate indignities--and love her still! I am queasy as soon as I sight Sandy Hook....

At the quarantine station I had a surprise. The _Alvina_ was not there.

One old roustabout told me he thought she had gone to sea. I was duly taken aback. Had I made the two-hour trip for nothing? Then another came to my aid. ”There she is, up in the bight,” he said. I followed his gesture, and saw her--a long, slim white hull, a cream-coloured funnel with a graceful rake; the Stars and Stripes fresh painted in two places on her s.h.i.+ning side. I hailed a motor boat to take me out. The boatman wanted three dollars, and I offered one. He protested that the yacht was interned and he had no right to take visitors out anyway. He'd get into trouble with ”39”--”39” being a United States destroyer lying in the Narrows a few hundred yards away. After some bickering we compromised on a dollar and a quarter.

That was a startling adventure for the humble publisher's reader!

Wallowing in an ice-glazed motor boat, in the lumpy water of a ”bight”--surrounded by s.h.i.+ps and the men who sail them--I might almost have been a hardy newspaper man! But Long Island commuters are nurtured to a tough and perilous his, and I clambered the _Alvina's _side without dropping hat, stick, or any of my pocketful of ma.n.u.scripts.

Joe Hogan, the steward, was there in his white jacket. He introduced me to the cook, the bosun, the ”chief,” the wireless, and the ”second.” The first officer was too heavy with liquor to notice the arrival of a stranger. Messrs. Haig and Haig, those _Dioscuri_ of seamen, had been at work. The skipper was ash.o.r.e. He owns a saloon.

The _Alvina_ is a lovely little vessel, 215 feet long, they told me, and about 525 tons. She is fitted with mahogany throughout; the staterooms all have bra.s.s double beds and private bathrooms attached; she has her own wireless telegraph and telephone, refrigerating apparatus, and everything to make the owner and his guests comfortable.

But her beautiful furnis.h.i.+ngs were tumbled this way and that in preparation for the sterner duties that lay before her. The lower deck was c.u.mbered with sacks of coal lashed down. A transatlantic voyage in January is likely to be a lively one for a yacht of 500 tons.

I found Tommy below in his bunk, cleaning up. He is a typical Dutch lad--round, open face, fair hair, and guileless blue eyes. He showed me all his treasures--his certificates of good conduct from all the s.h.i.+ps (both sail and steam) on which he has served; a picture of his mother, who died when he was six; and of his sister Greta--a very pretty girl--who is also mentioned in _Casuals of the Sea._ The drunken fireman in the story who dies after a debauch was Tommy's father who died in the same way. And with these other treasures Tommy showed me a packet of letters from Mr. McFee.

I do not want to offend Mr. McFee by describing his letters to this Dutch sailor-boy as ”sensible,” but that is just what they were. Tommy is one of his own ”casuals”--

--those frail craft upon the restless Sea Of Human Life, who strike the rocks uncharted, Who loom, sad phantoms, near us, drearily, Storm-driven, rudderless, with timbers started--

and these sailormen who drift from port to port on the winds of chance are most in need of sound Ben Franklin advice. Save your money; put it in the bank; read books; go to see the museums, libraries, and art galleries; get to know something about this great America if you intend to settle down there--that is the kind of word Tommy gets from his friend.

Gradually, as I talked with him, I began to see into the laboratory of life where ”Casuals of the Sea” originated. This book is valuable because it is a triumphant expression of the haphazard, strangely woven chances that govern the lives of the humble. In Tommy's honest, gentle face, and in the talk of his s.h.i.+pmates when we sat down to dinner together, I saw a microcosm of the strange barren life of the sea where men float about for years like driftwood. And out of all this ebbing tide of aimless, happy-go-lucky humanity McFee had chanced upon this boy from Amsterdam and had tried to pound into him some good sound common sense.

When I left her that afternoon, the _Alvina_ was getting up steam, and she sailed within a few hours. I had eaten and talked with her crew, and for a short s.p.a.ce had a glimpse of the lives and thoughts of the simple, childlike men who live on s.h.i.+ps. I realized for the first time the truth of that background of aimless hazard that makes ”Casuals of the Sea” a book of more than pa.s.sing merit.

As for Tommy, the printed word had him in thrall though he knew it not.

When he got back from Liverpool, two months later, I found him a job in the engine room of a big printing press. He was set to work oiling the dynamos, and at ten dollars a week he had a fine chance to work his way up. Indeed, he enrolled in a Scranton correspondence course on steam engineering and enchanted his Hempstead landlady by his simple ways.

That lasted just two weeks. The level ground made Tommy's feet uneasy.