Chapter I: The Voyage

In January, about nine years ago, I climbed on board the Messageries Maritimes steamer _Irouaddy_, for the purpose of getting to a cattle-station in Queensland. Like many others of the same line, the _Irouaddy_ is a grand boat, clean, well ventilated, very fast, and steady in bad weather.

Three days after leaving Marseilles we got to Naples. I had been there before, but as I never can be twenty minutes in a steamer without wanting to get out, of course I went ashore. There was nothing fresh to be seen, and certainly nothing fresh to be smelt. In appearance the whole place resembles a very inferior chromo-lithograph; and I cannot help thinking that the saying, “_Vede Napoli e poi Mori_,” has more reference to the asphyxiating nature of its smells than to any overpowering beauty about the place.

Leaving Naples, we passed through the Straits of Messina, and soon lost sight of land. The weather was glorious, and one morning observing the chief officer laboriously employed in doing nothing, I sauntered up to him with a view to engaging him in conversation. With the originality that distinguishes the British traveller, I observed that it was a fine day. If I had had the foggiest idea of the effect that this remark would have on him, I certainly should not have ventured to make it. He looked at the sky: it was blue. He looked at the sea: it was blue too; and I then noticed for the first time that the expression of his face was infinitely more blue than either of them. Shrugging his shoulders with an emphasis that would have fractured the collar-bone of anyone but a Frenchman, he called the Deity to witness that although the weather was indeed fine enough just now, neither he nor anyone else could possibly foretell what it would be like in twenty-four hours’ time. If it did come on to blow, he said, we were in a very exposed part of the Mediterranean, and, as our present course lay, over 400 miles from land. I left him, to meditate upon the extraordinary effect that being out of sight of land has on a French sailor. It is true they do not seem to come to grief very often, but still I rather mistrust these French sailors in a bad time. The least thing puts them into such a ludicrous state of fluster, one cannot help thinking that a good gale of wind would dishearten them altogether. They never seem to be quite at ease until they get back to Marseilles, and even then religious enthusiasm, or the prospect of another voyage, often wrings a votive offering to the Virgin out of the dregs of their past terror. The Church of the Virgin and Child at Marseilles absolutely bristles with these offerings, many of which indicate a singularly bad taste on the part of the donor. Among a host of paltry toys calculated to amuse none but the youngest children, I noticed one or two perambulators in a prominent position. Now, under certain circumstances, a perambulator might be a very neat and appropriate gift to the mother of a young child; but when we consider to Whom they are in reality offered, such presents become shocking in the extreme. It is impossible that people can have any real veneration for a Deity Whom they like to imagine wheeled about in a perambulator, or amusing Himself with the mechanical movements of a woollen rabbit. Indeed, except on the supposition that they are entirely destitute of any sense of humour, it is difficult to acquit such people of wilful profanity.

Upon this occasion, however, nothing occurred that the most pious or pusillanimous Frenchman could distort into a pretext for presenting his Maker with a toy, and three days after leaving Naples we reached Port Said. This town forms a receptacle for all the scum and dregs of every nation under the sun, and is undoubtedly one of the most villainous dens in existence. Composed almost entirely of casinos, gambling saloons, and houses sacred to the worship of blind Cupid, it is a sink of iniquity whose waters, like those of the Dead Sea, are so dense as to support numbers who would go to the bottom elsewhere. The lighthouse and the coalsheds are probably the only buildings in the place that have not a professional tendency towards the subversion of morals and the encouragement of vice.

Leaving Port Said, we crawled through the Canal, and after calling at Suez, steamed away down the oily expanse of the Red Sea. Between October and May the Red Sea is not often oppressively hot; but for the rest of the year the heat is excessive, and deaths from heat apoplexy not unfrequently occur.

How is it that one so very seldom meets any nice people travelling at sea, and then never discovers them until just before leaving the ship? It cannot be that no nice people travel by sea. It must be that the sea has a demoralising effect upon those who do. But it would seem that a prolonged sojourn upon the ocean has exactly the opposite effect of a temporary cruise, for sailors are, as a rule, as conspicuous for those qualities that make a man a pleasant companion as passengers are the reverse. Assuredly a passenger-ship presents humanity under a most unfavourable aspect. Sea-sickness alone renders most people positively misanthropic while it lasts, and excessively irritable for some time after it has passed away. But besides this, and such minor annoyances as having your cabin deluged with salt water if you leave the port open, and being suffocated with foul air if you keep it shut, the bare fact of being boxed up in the same ship with a number of fellow-sufferers is often very exasperating. Just as in hot weather a man is never so thirsty as when he knows that he can get nothing to drink, so on board ship a wild yearning for solitude is apt to overtake him, all the more violent that it cannot possibly be gratified. As to the ordeal of being obliged to live in the same cabin with one or more individuals for any length of time, it is not only sufficient to cause unreasoning hatred between strangers, but often to destroy a friendship of long standing. I am convinced that if David and Jonathan had been subjected to the disenchanting test of sharing a small cabin in a gale of wind, they would have been famous to posterity, less for the great love that they bare one another than for a propensity to quarrel savagely over trifles.

Certainly the sea develops the worst qualities of human nature more rapidly and more surely than any other phase of existence. In particular, I remember one man in whose company it was once my misfortune to make a voyage. My previous experience of him as a fellow-traveller, on dry land, had led me to suppose he was rather a pleasant companion than otherwise. Beyond an insane habit of appearing on every possible occasion in a variety of hideous and fantastic caps, he appeared to be unusually free from the vices of travellers. That is to say, he was neither inordinately greedy nor passionately selfish. He had no particular taste either for sight-seeing or for grumbling, and when in the presence of strangers, he did not consider it necessary either to insult them with impertinent familiarity or to repel them with churlish incivility. When I say that he was capable of visiting the Alhambra, St. Marc’s Cathedral, and the Pyramids, without displaying the slightest desire to engrave his name on the walls of any of them with a penknife, it will at once be seen that he had no ordinary claims to respect. Furthermore, his manners were those of a gentleman, and his language remarkable for the absence of anything like expletives. After he had been at sea a week, his own mother would not have recognised him.

For the first few days it was calm, and everything went well enough. My friend justified the sanguine expectations I had formed of him, by reclining all day in a long chair, puffing at a pipe with a head as big as his own, and with twice as much in it. This sort of thing was too good to last. We dropped in for a spell of bad weather. It did not last long, but from the moment that it began he was an altered man. An expression dismal as the latter end of tea-time took permanent possession of his usually cheerful countenance, and even the reappearance of fine weather entirely failed to restore him. He became exceedingly restless, and would indulge for hours at a time in the reprehensible practice of pacing up and down the deck, which is of all performances the most trying to the nerves of the spectators. Suddenly he would flump down into a chair with a violence extremely distracting to anyone who happened to be seeking repose within a radius of five yards. Just as one began to hope that he was settled at last, he would bound up again out of his chair, upsetting it against someone’s shins, and, without thinking it necessary to apologise, resume his detestable pastime of patrolling the deck.

But what astonished me more than anything was the bad language that he took to using upon the most trivial provocation. I lived in the next cabin to him, separated only by a partition open at the top. One day, as I was lying on my bunk reading, I heard him fossicking about among the things in his cabin in that spasmodic way which, even when a man is out of sight, never fails to convey an idea of awful passion to the listener. For a while his movements were only illuminated by smothered execrations, which the partition rendered nearly inaudible. Suddenly, however, he broke out into a torrent of oaths so fluent, so comprehensive, and so ornamental, that, shocked as I was at his profanity, I could not help admiring his genius. I have since reason to believe that he borrowed a great deal of it from the form of cursing employed by the Church of Rome against persons who happen to disagree with her doctrines. At the time, however, I thought it was quite original, and, of course, shouted to him to know what was the matter, “Oh! are you there?” he replied. “Nothing; only I cannot hang up my towel.”

He grew rapidly worse, but it was not until about a week later that his downward career reached its Nadir of demoralisation. I hardly expect to be believed when I say, that one day, without the slightest provocation, at a distance of over 1500 miles from land, he appeared in broad daylight, on the ship’s quarter-deck, in knickerbockers. The spectacle of such a self-constituted pariah of society was extremely depressing. I cannot help thinking that a man who wears knickerbockers on board ship in the tropics must be capable of committing almost any crime. It was a painful occurrence altogether, and I should not have mentioned it, except with a view to showing how apparently harmless people frequently become exceedingly disagreeable at sea.

Six days out from Suez we got to Aden, a most magnificent cinder-heap, quite unlike anything else I have ever seen. The town of Aden lies at the foot of a range of most discouraging-looking mountains, so forlornly barren, so pitilessly rugged, they do not appear to be made of anything half so cheerful as rocks and stones. They have more the appearance of the material by means of which an inferior birdstuffer endeavours to reproduce the handiwork of Nature in a rockwork at the back of his specimens. There is something genuine and hearty about a good mass of rock very different to the attenuated peaks of Aden, compared to which a granite boulder is affability itself.

When lit up by the splendour of a tropical sunset, however, the mountains of Aden assume a different aspect. They are usually of a pale mauve colour, which deepens, as the sun sets, to a glorious purple, forming a startling contrast to the green and golden expanse of the surrounding sea. Gradually the purple fades, the opal light dies out of the sea, and a spectral gloom creeps over everything but the highest peaks. Round these the rays of the departed sun linger with an unearthly glare, till in the increasing darkness they seem to glow like the ragged teeth of a red-hot saw.

On the whole, the scenery of the tropics can never compare with that of higher latitudes. The strength of the sunlight is so great that objects are either defined with unpleasant sharpness or blurred in a quivering haze of heat. There is none of that glorious depth of colouring and softness of outline, one distance fading into another, softer and softer, yet still distinct, that the moist atmosphere of the west coast of Scotland or of the fen countries produces in such perfection. For my own part, I do not believe the scenery of the west coast of Scotland has a rival in the world. Of course it is easy to find places constructed on a far larger scale, but it is not altogether upon this that the beauty of scenery depends. It is very doubtful whether a mountain derives much additional beauty from its summit being invisible; and certainly a river so broad that no one can see across it, is less picturesque than one which affords a view of both its banks at the same time. For a few minutes at sunrise, and at sunset, it is difficult to imagine anything more gorgeous than the colouring of the tropics. But it quickly fades, and even while it lasts it is more calculated to dazzle than to please. There is too much of the patchwork counterpane and the circus-poster about it. Of course a tropical sunset is a sight that it does not happen to everyone to witness, but anyone can get a very fair idea of what it is like by eating a quantity of cold pork-pie and unripe apples just before going to bed.

Leaving Aden, we passed one night to the northward of the island of Socotra, and were fortunate enough to come across the phenomenon known as a “milky sea.” It was a wonderfully beautiful sight. The sea was deadly calm, and all round as far as the eye could reach it was as white and as transparent as London milk. Out of this the mountains of Socotra, distant eight miles, rose up clear and distinct in the brilliant starlight, and black as ink by contrast with the whiteness of the sea. Several ambitious passengers ladled up some of the water, to try and discover its component parts, but I don’t think they found out much, except that if it was allowed to stand some time, a thick sediment was precipitated, leaving the water quite clear again.

Crossing the Indian Ocean, the weather was so monotonously calm, that one day the captain was encouraged to give the order for fire and boat station practice. If intended to display the smart discipline and efficiency of the ship’s company, this exhibition had better have been suppressed; but if merely to warn passengers against the incautious use of matches, and the danger of falling overboard, it was invaluable. Whether the crew had been expecting the order or not, I cannot say; but I will do them the justice to affirm that the ringing of the fire-bell was followed by no sort of confusion or hurry. It was only after an interval had elapsed, sufficient to allow the strongest swimmer to drown, and the smallest spark to become a conflagration, that they began to saunter leisurely aft, dragging after them coils of hose, with the dejected air of men who have seen the same thing done a dozen times before and never known any good to come of it. Far more activity was displayed by a vast army of stewards who swarmed up the companion at the first sound of the bell, headed by the chief steward, or _maître d’hôtel_, with a drawn sword in his hand. As these worthies took no part in the subsequent proceedings, they probably only came up to be saved.

After some consultation it was agreed that an attempt should be made to lower one of the quarter-boats, and to this the crew turned their attention. But an unforeseen difficulty presented itself. Who was to undertake the arduous task of climbing into the boat, and removing the canvas cover? An animated discussion took place, the result of which was that one man was singled out, apparently much against his inclination, for the enterprise in hand. With a vast effort he collected his energies, and, scattering a glance of melancholy defiance at his recreant companions, he ascended the bulwarks and climbed cautiously on to the boat. It soon became evident that there was far more cause for his alarm than at first appeared. As long as he was engaged in unlashing the boat’s cover, the crew amused themselves by rolling up cigarettes and smoking them. But he had no sooner finished than the men stationed at the after “fall” of the boat suddenly awoke to an enthusiastic sense of duty, and lowered away. Those at the other “fall” were not so alert, and the consequence was the stem of the boat went down with a run, sending oars, stretchers, planks, and everything movable in her except the man, flying into the sea. Fortunately for himself, this hero got mixed up round one of the thwarts and remained there until the boat was once more raised to a horizontal position, when he was extricated, positively gibbering with terror and rage. It having been conclusively proved that in case of emergency one end of the boat at any rate could be lowered, this was considered sufficient, and the fire-hose became the next object of interest to the company. After some minutes of patient toil, one end of this ingenious contrivance was connected with the machinery, and the order to start pumping was given. An ominous pause followed, during which not a drop of water appeared. The men began to look grave and to whisper hurriedly and excitedly together. But a breathless silence fell upon all present when the second lieutenant advanced to the business end of the hose, with the air of a man who knows his duty and is prepared to perform it at all risks. The excitement now became so intense as to be quite painful, but still silence prevailed. Suddenly a terrible gurgle was heard in the pipe, absolutely paralysing the lieutenant, who remained rooted to the spot with countenance transfigured by terror. In a moment a young Niagara burst from the pipe, discharging itself full upon the unfortunate officer, and hurling the hose in convulsions about the deck. The shock at once restored the use of his limbs to the lieutenant. With a loud yell of anguish he turned and fled from a foe, with whom, to judge by appearances, it was some time since he had had an encounter.

This concluded the diversion of fire and boat station practice, and the ship’s company returned once more to their ordinary duties. The captain resumed his occupation of walking up and down, spitting frequently and emphatically upon his own quarterdeck. The chief engineer took up his position by the rails of the engine-room, and, with his watch in his hand, counted the revolutions of the propeller. The doctor and the first lieutenant threw quoits into a bucket, and the remainder of the crew, with the exception of a few who still retained sufficient energy to smoke, went fast asleep.