She was a big,high-class cargo-steamer of a type that is to be met on the sea no more--black hull,with low,white superstructures,powerfully rigged with three masts and a lot of yards on the fore;two hands at her enormous wheel--steam steering-gear was not a matter of course in these days--and with them on the bridge three others,bulky in thick blue jackets,ruddy-faced,muffled up,with peak caps--I suppose all her officers.There are ships I have met more than once and known well by sight whose names I have forgotten;but the name of that ship seen once so many years ago in the clear flush of a cold,pale sunrise I have not forgotten.How could I--the first English ship on whose side I ever laid my hand!The name--I read it letter by letter on the bow--was James Westoll.Not very romantic,you will say.The name of a very considerable,well-known,and universally respected North country ship-owner,I believe.James Westoll!What better name could an honourable hard-working ship have?To me the very grouping of the letters is alive with the romantic feeling of her reality as I saw her floating motionless and borrowing an ideal grace from the austere purity of the light.
We were then very near her and,on a sudden impulse,I volunteered to pull bow in the dinghy which shoved off at once to put the pilot on board while our boat,fanned by the faint air which had attended us all through the night,went on gliding gently past the black,glistening length of the ship.A few strokes brought us alongside,and it was then that,for the very first time in my life,I heard myself addressed in English--the speech of my secret choice,of my future,of long friendships,of the deepest affections,of hours of toil and hours of ease,and of solitary hours,too,of books read,of thoughts pursued,of remembered emotions--of my very dreams!And if (after being thus fashioned by it in that part of me which cannot decay)I dare not claim it aloud as my own,then,at any rate,the speech of my children.Thus small events grow memorable by the passage of time.As to the quality of the address itself I cannot say it was very striking.Too short for eloquence and devoid of all charm of tone,it consisted precisely of the three words "Look out there!"growled out huskily above my head.
It proceeded from a big fat fellow (he had an obtrusive,hairy double chin)in a blue woollen shirt and roomy breeches pulled up very high,even to the level of his breastbone,by a pair of braces quite exposed to public view.As where he stood there was no bulwark,but only a rail and stanchions,I was able to take in at a glance the whole of his voluminous person from his feet to the high crown of his soft black hat,which sat like an absurd flanged cone on his big head.The grotesque and massive aspect of that deck hand (I suppose he was that--very likely the lamp-trimmer)surprised me very much.My course of reading,of dreaming,and longing for the sea had not prepared me for a sea brother of that sort.I never met again a figure in the least like his except in the illustrations to Mr.W.W.Jacobs's most entertaining tales of barges and coasters;but the inspired talent of Mr.Jacobs for poking endless fun at poor,innocent sailors in a prose which,however extravagant in its felicitous invention,is always artistically adjusted to observed truth,was not yet.Perhaps Mr.Jacobs himself was not yet.I fancy that,at most,if he had made his nurse laugh it was about all he had achieved at that early date.
Therefore,I repeat,other disabilities apart,I could not have been prepared for the sight of that husky old porpoise.The object of his concise address was to call my attention to a rope which he incontinently flung down for me to catch.I caught it,though it was not really necessary,the ship having no way on her by that time.Then everything went on very swiftly.The dinghy came with a slight bump against the steamer's side;the pilot,grabbing for the rope ladder,had scrambled half-way up before I knew that our task of boarding was done;the harsh,muffled clanging of the engine-room telegraph struck my ear through the iron plate;my companion in the dinghy was urging me to "shove off--push hard";and when I bore against the smooth flank of the first English ship I ever touched in my life,I felt it already throbbing under my open palm.
Her head swung a little to the west,pointing toward the miniature lighthouse of the Jolliette breakwater,far away there,hardly distinguishable against the land.The dinghy danced a squashy,splashy jig in the wash of the wake;and,turning in my seat,I followed the James Westoll with my eyes.Before she had gone in a quarter of a mile she hoisted her flag,as the harbour regulations prescribe for arriving and departing ships.I saw it suddenly flicker and stream out on the flag staff.The Red Ensign!In the pellucid,colourless atmosphere bathing the drab and gray masses of that southern land,the livid islets,the sea of pale,glassy blue under the pale,glassy sky of that cold sunrise,it was,as far as the eye could reach,the only spot of ardent colour--flame-like,intense,and presently as minute as the tiny red spark the concentrated reflection of a great fire kindles in the clear heart of a globe of crystal.The Red Ensign--the symbolic,protecting,warm bit of bunting flung wide upon the seas,and destined for so many years to be the only roof over my head.
