He Was A Homeric Talker, Plain, Strong, And
Cheerful; And The Things And The People Of Which He Spoke Became
Readily and clearly present to the minds of those who heard him.
This, with a certain added colouring of rhetoric
And rodomontade,
must have been the style of Burns, who equally charmed the ears of
duchesses and hostlers.
Yet freely and personally as he spoke, many points remained obscure
in his narration. The Engineers, for instance, was a service which
he praised highly; it is true there would be trouble with the
sergeants; but then the officers were gentlemen, and his own, in
particular, one among ten thousand. It sounded so far exactly like
an episode in the rakish, topsy-turvy life of such an one as I had
imagined. But then there came incidents more doubtful, which
showed an almost impudent greed after gratuities, and a truly
impudent disregard for truth. And then there was the tale of his
departure. He had wearied, it seems, of Woolwich, and one fine
day, with a companion, slipped up to London for a spree. I have a
suspicion that spree was meant to be a long one; but God disposes
all things; and one morning, near Westminster Bridge, whom should
he come across but the very sergeant who had recruited him at
first! What followed? He himself indicated cavalierly that he had
then resigned. Let us put it so. But these resignations are
sometimes very trying.
At length, after having delighted us for hours, he took himself
away from the companion; and I could ask Mackay who and what he
was. 'That?' said Mackay. 'Why, that's one of the stowaways.'
'No man,' said the same authority, 'who has had anything to do with
the sea, would ever think of paying for a passage.' I give the
statement as Mackay's, without endorsement; yet I am tempted to
believe that it contains a grain of truth; and if you add that the
man shall be impudent and thievish, or else dead-broke, it may even
pass for a fair representation of the facts. We gentlemen of
England who live at home at ease have, I suspect, very insufficient
ideas on the subject. All the world over, people are stowing away
in coal-holes and dark corners, and when ships are once out to sea,
appearing again, begrimed and bashful, upon deck. The career of
these sea-tramps partakes largely of the adventurous. They may be
poisoned by coal-gas, or die by starvation in their place of
concealment; or when found they may be clapped at once and
ignominiously into irons, thus to be carried to their promised
land, the port of destination, and alas! brought back in the same
way to that from which they started, and there delivered over to
the magistrates and the seclusion of a county jail. Since I
crossed the Atlantic, one miserable stowaway was found in a dying
state among the fuel, uttered but a word or two, and departed for a
farther country than America.
When the stowaway appears on deck, he has but one thing to pray
for: that he be set to work, which is the price and sign of his
forgiveness. After half an hour with a swab or a bucket, he feels
himself as secure as if he had paid for his passage. It is not
altogether a bad thing for the company, who get more or less
efficient hands for nothing but a few plates of junk and duff; and
every now and again find themselves better paid than by a whole
family of cabin passengers. Not long ago, for instance, a packet
was saved from nearly certain loss by the skill and courage of a
stowaway engineer. As was no more than just, a handsome
subscription rewarded him for his success: but even without such
exceptional good fortune, as things stand in England and America,
the stowaway will often make a good profit out of his adventure.
Four engineers stowed away last summer on the same ship, the
Circassia; and before two days after their arrival each of the four
had found a comfortable berth. This was the most hopeful tale of
emigration that I heard from first to last; and as you see, the
luck was for stowaways.
My curiosity was much inflamed by what I heard; and the next
morning, as I was making the round of the ship, I was delighted to
find the ex-Royal Engineer engaged in washing down the white paint
of a deck house. There was another fellow at work beside him, a
lad not more than twenty, in the most miraculous tatters, his
handsome face sown with grains of beauty and lighted up by
expressive eyes. Four stowaways had been found aboard our ship
before she left the Clyde, but these two had alone escaped the
ignominy of being put ashore. Alick, my acquaintance of last
night, was Scots by birth, and by trade a practical engineer; the
other was from Devonshire, and had been to sea before the mast.
Two people more unlike by training, character, and habits it would
be hard to imagine; yet here they were together, scrubbing paint.
Alick had held all sorts of good situations, and wasted many
opportunities in life. I have heard him end a story with these
words: 'That was in my golden days, when I used finger-glasses.'
Situation after situation failed him; then followed the depression
of trade, and for months he had hung round with other idlers,
playing marbles all day in the West Park, and going home at night
to tell his landlady how he had been seeking for a job. I believe
this kind of existence was not unpleasant to Alick himself, and he
might have long continued to enjoy idleness and a life on tick; but
he had a comrade, let us call him Brown, who grew restive. This
fellow was continually threatening to slip his cable for the
States, and at last, one Wednesday, Glasgow was left widowed of her
Brown.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 16 of 70
Words from 15315 to 16332
of 70588
