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CHAPTER TEN The Famine In 1921, the great famine which had swept over Ukraine had been the result of a failure of the crops, a prolonged drought and the excesses of Militant Communism which had demoralized the country. The Soviets, more or less unwillingly, allowed the despatch of foreign assistance and this saved the lives of millions. There was to be no interference in the punishment of the obstinate peasants this time. In the fall of 1929, just as compulsory collectivization was being introduced, the government in Moscow made an important change in the agricultural set-up, for it transferred the Commissariat of Agriculture to the central group by establishing an All-Union Commissariat which was to be in control of all agriculture in the Soviet Union. This meant that in Ukraine all of the work which had been previously done by the local authorities was now transferred to Moscow. The republic commissariats ceased to have the power to pursue individual plans for improving the conditions of the soil, for varying the crops as their own advisers decided or as the population felt it necessary. Everything was to be done from the centre and the Ukrainian Soviet Government was compelled to hand over all of its research stations and other institutions to Muscovite control.
Ukraine Under the Soviets
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The head-waiter of the Carvoitz almost ran to meet Portson and his guests as they came up the steps from the palm-court where the string band plays. “Not seen you since—oh, ever so long,” he began. “So glad to get your wire. Quite well—eh?” “Fair to middling, Henri,” Portson shook hands with him. “You’re looking all right, too. Have you got us our table?” Henri nodded towards a pink alcove, kept for mixed doubles, which discreetly commanded the main dining-room’s glitter and blaze. “Good man!” said Portson. “Now, this is serious, Henri. We put ourselves unreservedly in your hands. We’re weather-beaten mariners—though we don’t look it, and we haven’t eaten a Christian meal in months. Have you thought of all that, Henri, mon ami?” “The menu, I have compose it myself,” Henri answered with the gravity of a high priest. It was more than a year since Portson—of Portson, Peake and Ensell, Stock and Share Brokers—had drawn Henri’s attention to an apparently extinct Oil Company which, a little later, erupted profitably; and it may be that Henri prided himself on paying all debts in full.
The most recent foreign millionaire and the even more recent foreign actress at a table near the entrance clamoured for his attention while he convoyed the party to the pink alcove. With his own hands he turned out some befrilled electrics and lit four pale-rose candles.
“Bridal!” some one murmured. “Quite bridal!”
“So glad you like. There is nothing too good.” Henri slid away, and the four men sat down. They had the coarse-grained complexions of men who habitually did themselves well, and an air, too, of recent, red-eyed dissipation. Maddingham, the eldest, was a thick-set middle-aged presence, with crisped grizzled hair, of the type that one associates with Board Meetings. He limped slightly. Tegg, who followed him, blinking, was neat, small, and sandy, of unmistakable Wavy cut, but sheepish aspect. Winchmore, the youngest, was more on the lines of the conventional pre-war “nut,” but his eyes were sunk in his head and his hands black-nailed and roughened. Portson, their host, with Vandyke beard and a comfortable little stomach, beamed upon them as they settled to their oysters.
“That’s what I mean,” said the carrying voice of the foreign actress, whom Henri had just disabused of the idea that she had been promised the pink alcove. “They ain’t alive to the war yet. Now, what’s the matter with those four dubs yonder joining the British Army or—or doing something?”
“Who’s your friend?” Maddingham asked.
“I’ve forgotten her name for the minute,” Portson replied, “but she’s the latest thing in imported patriotic piece-goods. She sings ‘Sons of the Empire, Go Forward!’ at the Palemseum. It makes the aunties weep.”
“That’s Sidney Latter. She’s not half bad,” Tegg reached for the vinegar. “We ought to see her some night.”
“Yes. We’ve a lot of time for that sort of thing,” Maddingham grunted. “I’ll take your oysters, Portson, if you don’t want ’em.”
“Cheer up, Papa Maddingham! ’Soon be dead!” Winchmore suggested.
Maddingham glared at him. “If I’d had you with me for one week, Master Winchmore——”
“Not the least use,” the boy retorted. “I’ve just been made a full-lootenant. I have indeed. I couldn’t reconcile it with my conscience to take Etheldreda out any more as a plain sub. She’s too flat in the floor.”
“Did you get those new washboards of yours fixed?” Tegg cut in.
“Don’t talk shop already,” Portson protested. “This is Vesiga soup. I don’t know what he’s arranged in the way of drinks.”
“Pol Roger ’04,” said the waiter.
“Sound man, Henri,” said Winchmore. “But,” he eyed the waiter doubtfully, “I don’t quite like.... What’s your alleged nationality?”
“’Henri’s nephew, monsieur,” the smiling waiter replied, and laid a gloved hand on the table. It creaked corkily at the wrist. “Bethisy-sur-Oise,” he explained. “My uncle he buy me all the hand for Christmas. It is good to hold plates only.”
“Oh! Sorry I spoke,” said Winchmore.
“Monsieur is right. But my uncle is very careful, even with neutrals.” He poured the champagne.
“Hold a minute,” Maddingham cried. “First toast of obligation: For what we are going to receive, thank God and the British Navy.”
“Amen!” said the others with a nod towards Lieutenant Tegg, of the Royal Navy afloat, and, occasionally, of the Admiralty ashore.
“Next! ‘Damnation to all neutrals!’” Maddingham went on.
“Amen! Amen!” they answered between gulps that heralded the sole à la Colbert. Maddingham picked up the menu. “Suprème of chicken,” he read loudly. “Filet béarnaise, Woodcock and Richebourg ’74, Pêches Melba, Croûtes Baron. I couldn’t have improved on it myself; though one might,” he went on—“one might have substituted quail en casserole for the woodcock.”
“Then there would have been no reason for the Burgundy,” said Tegg with equal gravity.
“You’re right,” Maddingham replied.
The foreign actress shrugged her shoulders. “What can you do with people like that?” she said to her companion. “And yet I’ve been singing to ’em for a fortnight.”
“I left it all to Henri,” said Portson.
“My Gord!” the eavesdropping woman whispered. “Get on to that! Ain’t it typical? They leave everything to Henri in this country.”
“By the way,” Tegg asked Winchmore after the fish, “where did you mount that one-pounder of yours after all?”
“Midships. Etheldreda won’t carry more weight forward. She’s wet enough as it is.”
“Why don’t you apply for another craft?” Portson put in. “There’s a chap at Southampton just now, down with pneumonia and——”
“No, thank you. I know Etheldreda. She’s nothing to write home about, but when she feels well she can shift a bit.”
Maddingham leaned across the table. “If she does more than eleven in a flat calm,” said he, “I’ll—I’ll give you Hilarity.”
“’Wouldn’t be found dead in Hilarity,” was Winchmore’s grateful reply. “You don’t mean to say you’ve taken her into real wet water, Papa? Where did it happen?”
The other laughed. Maddingham’s red face turned brick colour, and the veins on the cheekbones showed blue through a blurr of short bristles.
“He’s been convoying neutrals—in a tactful manner,” Tegg chuckled.
Maddingham filled his glass and scowled at Tegg. “Yes,” he said, “and here’s special damnation to me Lords of the Admiralty. A more muddle-headed set of brass-bound apes——”
“My! My! My!” Winchmore chirruped soothingly. “It don’t seem to have done you any good, Papa. Who were you conveyancing?”
Maddingham snapped out a ship’s name and some details of her build.
“Oh, but that chap’s a friend of mine!” cried Winchmore. “I ran across him—the—not so long ago, hugging the Scotch coast—out of his course, he said, owing to foul weather and a new type of engine—a Diesel. That’s him, ain’t it—the complete neutral?” He mentioned an outstanding peculiarity of the ship’s rig.
“Yes,” said Portson. “Did you board him, Winchmore?”
“No. There’d been a bit of a blow the day before and old Ethel’s only dinghy had dropped off the hooks. But he signalled me all his symptoms. He was as communicative as—as a lady in the Promenade. (Hold on, Nephew of my Uncle! I’m going to have some more of that Béarnaise fillet.) His smell attracted me. I chaperoned him for a couple of days.”
“Only two days. You hadn’t anything to complain of,” said Maddingham wrathfully.
“I didn’t complain. If he chose to hug things, ’twasn’t any of my business. I’m not a Purity League. ’Didn’t care what he hugged, so long as I could lie behind him and give him first chop at any mines that were going. I steered in his wake (I really can steer a bit now, Portson) and let him stink up the whole of the North Sea. I thought he might come in useful for bait. No Burgundy, thanks, Nephew of my Uncle. I’m sticking to the Jolly Roger.”
“Go on, then—before you’re speechless. Was he any use as bait?” Tegg demanded.
“We never got a fair chance. As I told you, he hugged the coast till dark, and then he scraped round Gilarra Head and went up the bay nearly to the beach.”
“’Lights out?” Maddingham asked.
Winchmore nodded. “But I didn’t worry about that. I was under his stern. As luck ’ud have it, there was a fishing-party in the bay, and we walked slam into the middle of ’em—a most ungodly collection of local talent. ’First thing I knew a steam-launch fell aboard us, and a boy—a nasty little Navy boy, Tegg—wanted to know what I was doing. I told him, and he cursed me for putting the fish down just as they were rising. Then the two of us (he was hanging on to my quarter with a boat-hook) drifted on to a steam trawler and our friend the Neutral and a ten-oared cutter full of the military, all mixed up. They were subs from the garrison out for a lark. Uncle Newt explained over the rail about the weather and his engine-troubles, but they were all so keen to carry on with their fishing, they didn’t fuss. They told him to clear off.”
“Was there anything on the move round Gilarra at that time?” Tegg inquired.
“Oh, they spun me the usual yarns about the water being thick with ’em, and asked me to help; but I couldn’t stop. The cutter’s stern-sheets were piled up with mines, like lobster-pots, and from the way the soldiers handled ’em I thought I’d better get out. So did Uncle Newt. He didn’t like it a bit. There were a couple of shots fired at something just as we cleared the Head, and one dropped rather close to him. (These duck-shoots in the dark are dam’ dangerous y’know.) He lit up at once—tail-light, head-light, and side-lights. I had no more trouble with him the rest of the night.”
“But what about the report that you sawed off the steam-launch’s boat-hook?” Tegg demanded suddenly.
“What! You don’t mean to say that little beast of a snotty reported it? He was scratchin’ poor old Ethel’s paint to pieces. I never reported what he said to me. And he called me a damned amateur, too. Well! Well! War’s war. I missed all that fishing-party that time. My orders were to follow Uncle Newt. So I followed—and poor Ethel without a dry rag on her.”
Winchmore refilled his glass.
“Well, don’t get poetical,” said Portson. “Let’s have the rest of your trip.”
“There wasn’t any rest,” Winchmore insisted pathetically. “There was just good old Ethel with her engines missing like sin, and Uncle Newt thumping and stinking half a mile ahead of us, and me eating bread and Worcester sauce. I do when I feel that way. Besides, I wanted to go back and join the fishing-party. Just before dark I made out Cordelia—that Southampton ketch that old Jarrott fitted with oil auxiliaries for a family cruiser last summer. She’s a beamy bus, but she can roll, and she was doing an honest thirty degrees each way when I overhauled her. I asked Jarrott if he was busy. He said he wasn’t. But he was. He’s like me and Nelson when there’s any sea on.”
“But Jarrott’s a Quaker. ’Has been for generations. Why does he go to war?” said Maddingham.
“If it comes to that,” Portson said, “why do any of us?”
“Jarrott’s a mine-sweeper,” Winchmore replied with deep feeling. “The Quaker religion (I’m not a Quaker, but I’m much more religious than any of you chaps give me credit for) has decided that mine-sweeping is lifesaving. Consequently”—he dwelt a little on the word—“the profession is crowded with Quakers—specially off Scarborough. ’See? Owin’ to the purity of their lives, they ‘all go to Heaven when they die—Roll, Jordan, Roll!’”
“Disgustin’,” said the actress audibly as she drew on her gloves. Winchmore looked at her with delight. “That’s a peach-Melba, too,” he said.“And David Jarrott’s a mine-sweeper,” Maddingham mused aloud. “So you turned our Neutral over to him, Winchmore, did you?”
“Yes, I did. It was the end of my beat—I wish I didn’t feel so sleepy—and I explained the whole situation to Jarrott, over the rail. ’Gave him all my silly instructions—those latest ones, y’know. I told him to do nothing to imperil existing political relations. I told him to exercise tact. I—I told him that in my capac’ty as Actin’ Lootenant, you see. Jarrott’s only a Lootenant-Commander—at fifty-four, too! Yes, I handed my Uncle Newt over to Jarrott to chaperone, and I went back to my—I can say it perfectly—pis-ca-to-rial party in the bay. Now I’m going to have a nap. In ten minutes I shall be on deck again. This is my first civilised dinner in nine weeks, so I don’t apologise.”
He pushed his plate away, dropped his chin on his palm and closed his eyes.
“Lyndnoch and Jarrott’s Bank, established 1793,” said Maddingham half to himself. “I’ve seen old Jarrott in Cowes week bullied by his skipper and steward till he had to sneak ashore to sleep. And now he’s out mine-sweeping with Cordelia! What’s happened to his—I shall forget my own name next—Belfast-built two-hundred tonner?”
“Goneril,” said Portson. “He turned her over to the Service in October. She’s—she was Culana.”
“She was Culana, was she? My God! I never knew that. Where did it happen?”
“Off the same old Irish corner I was watching last month. My young cousin was in her; so was one of the Raikes boys. A whole nest of mines, laid between patrols.”
“I’ve heard there’s some dirty work going on there now,” Maddingham half whispered.
“You needn’t tell me that,” Portson returned. “But one gets a little back now and again.”
“What are you two talking about?” said Tegg, who seemed to be dozing, too.
“Culana,” Portson answered as he lit a cigarette.
“Yes, that was rather a pity. But.... What about this Newt of ours?”
“I took her over from Jarrott next day—off Margate,” said Portson. “Jarrott wanted to get back to his mine-sweeping.”
“Every man to his taste,” said Maddingham. “That never appealed to me. Had they detailed you specially to look after the Newt?”
“Me among others,” Portson admitted. “I was going down Channel when I got my orders, and so I went on with him. Jarrott had been tremendously interested in his course up to date—specially off the Wash. He’d charted it very carefully and he said he was going back to find out what some of the kinks and curves meant. Has he found out, Tegg?”
Tegg thought for a moment. “Cordelia was all right up to six o’clock yesterday evening,” he said.“’Glad of that. Then I did what Winchmore did. I lay behind this stout fellow and saw him well into the open.”
“Did you say anything to him?” Tegg asked.
“Not a thing. He kept moving all the time.”
“’See anything?” Tegg continued.
“No. He didn’t seem to be in demand anywhere in the Channel, and, when I got him on the edge of soundings I dropped him—as per your esteemed orders.”
Tegg nodded again and murmured some apology.
“Where did you pick him up, Maddingham?” Portson went on.
Maddingham snorted.
“Well north and west of where you left him heading up the Irish Channel and stinking like a taxi. I hadn’t had my breakfast. My cook was seasick; so were four of my hands.”
“I can see that meeting. Did you give him a gun across the bows?” Tegg asked.
“No, no. Not that time. I signalled him to heave to. He had his papers ready before I came over the side. You see,” Maddingham said pleadingly, “I’m new to this business. Perhaps I wasn’t as polite to him as I should have been if I’d had my breakfast.”
“He deposed that Maddingham came alongside swearing like a bargee,” said Tegg.
“Not in the least. This is what happened.” Maddingham turned to Portson. “I asked him where he was bound for and he told me—Antigua.”
“Hi! Wake up, Winchmore. You’re missing something.” Portson nudged Winchmore, who was slanting sideways in his chair.
“Right! All right! I’m awake,” said Winchmore stickily. “I heard every word.”
Maddingham went on. “I told him that this wasn’t his way to Antigua——”
“Antigua. Antigua!” Winchmore finished rubbing his eyes. “‘There was a young bride of Antigua——’”
“Hsh! Hsh!” said Portson and Tegg warningly.
“Why? It’s the proper one. ‘Who said to her spouse, “What a pig you are!”’”
“Ass!” Maddingham growled and continued: “He told me that he’d been knocked out of his reckoning by foul weather and engine-trouble, owing to experimenting with a new type of Diesel engine. He was perfectly frank about it.”
“So he was with me,” said Winchmore. “Just like a real lady. I hope you were a real gentleman, Papa.”
“I asked him what he’d got. He didn’t object. He had some fifty thousand gallon of oil for his new Diesel engine, and the rest was coal. He said he needed the oil to get to Antigua with, he was taking the coal as ballast, and he was coming back, so he told me, with coconuts. When he’d quite finished, I said: ‘What sort of damned idiot do you take me for?’ He said: ‘I haven’t decided yet!’ Then I said he’d better come into port with me, and we’d arrive at a decision. He said that his papers were in perfect order and that my instructions—mine, please!—were not to imperil political relations. I hadn’t received these asinine instructions, so I took the liberty of contradicting him—perfectly politely, as I told them at the Inquiry afterward. He was a small-boned man with a grey beard, in a glengarry, and he picked his teeth a lot. He said: ‘The last time I met you, Mister Maddingham, you were going to Carlsbad, and you told me all about your blood-pressures in the wagon-lit before we tossed for upper berth. Don’t you think you are a little old to buccaneer about the sea this way?’ I couldn’t recall his face—he must have been some fellow that I’d travelled with some time or other. I told him I wasn’t doing this for amusement—it was business. Then I ordered him into port. He said: ‘S’pose I don’t go?’ I said: ‘Then I’ll sink you.’ Isn’t it extraordinary how natural it all seems after a few weeks? If any one had told me when I commissioned Hilarity last summer what I’d be doing this spring I’d—I’d ... God! It is mad, isn’t it?”
“Quite,” said Portson. “But not bad fun.”
“Not at all, but that’s what makes it all the madder. Well, he didn’t argue any more. He warned me I’d be hauled over the coals for what I’d done, and I warned him to keep two cables ahead of me and not to yaw.”
“Jaw?” said Winchmore, sleepily.
“No. Yaw,” Maddingham snarled. “Not to look as if he even wanted to yaw. I warned him that, if he did, I’d loose off into him, end-on. But I was absolutely polite about it. ’Give you my word, Tegg.”
“I believe you. Oh, I believe you,” Tegg replied.
“Well, so I took him into port—and that was where I first ran across our Master Tegg. He represented the Admiralty on that beach.”
The small blinking man nodded. “The Admiralty had that honour,” he said graciously.
Maddingham turned to the others angrily. “I’d been rather patting myself on the back for what I’d done, you know. Instead of which, they held a court-martial——”
“We called it an Inquiry,” Tegg interjected.
“You weren’t in the dock. They held a court-martial on me to find out how often I’d sworn at the poor injured Neutral, and whether I’d given him hot-water bottles and tucked him up at night. It’s all very fine to laugh, but they treated me like a pickpocket. There were two fat-headed civilian judges and that blackguard Tegg in the conspiracy. A cursed lawyer defended my Neutral and he made fun of me. He dragged in everything the Neutral had told him about my blood-pressures on the Carlsbad trip. And that’s what you get for trying to serve your country in your old age!” Maddingham emptied and refilled his glass.
“We did give you rather a grilling,” said Tegg placidly. “It’s the national sense of fair play.”
“I could have stood it all if it hadn’t been for the Neutral. We dined at the same hotel while this court-martial was going on, and he used to come over to my table and sympathise with me! He told me that I was fighting for his ideals and the uplift of democracy, but I must respect the Law of Nations!”
“And we respected ’em,” said Tegg. “His papers were perfectly correct; the Court discharged him. We had to consider existing political relations. I told Maddingham so at the hotel and he——”
Again Maddingham turned to the others. “I couldn’t make up my mind about Tegg at the Inquiry,” he explained. “He had the air of a decent sailor-man, but he talked like a poisonous politician.”
“I was,” Tegg returned. “I had been ordered to change into that rig. So I changed.”
Maddingham ran one fat square hand through his crisped hair and looked up under his eyebrows like a shy child, while the others lay back and laughed.
“I suppose I ought to have been on to the joke,” he stammered, “but I’d blacked myself all over for the part of Lootenant-Commander R.N.V.R. in time of war, and I’d given up thinking as a banker. If it had been put before me as a business proposition I might have done better.”
“I thought you were playing up to me and the judges all the time,” said Tegg. “I never dreamed you took it seriously.”
“Well, I’ve been trained to look on the law as serious. I’ve had to pay for some of it in my time, you know.”
“I’m sorry,” said Tegg. “We were obliged to let that oily beggar go—for reasons, but, as I told Maddingham, the night the award was given, his duty was to see that he was properly directed to Antigua.”
“Naturally,” Portson observed. “That being the Neutral’s declared destination. And what did Maddingham do? Shut up, Maddingham!”
Said Tegg, with downcast eyes: “Maddingham took my hand and squeezed it; he looked lovingly into my eyes (he did!); he turned plum-colour, and he said: ‘I will’—just like a bridegroom at the altar. It makes me feel shy to think of it even now. I didn’t see him after that till the evening when Hilarity was pulling out of the Basin, and Maddingham was cursing the tug-master.”
“I was in a hurry,” said Maddingham. “I wanted to get to the Narrows and wait for my Neutral there. I dropped down to Biller and Grove’s yard that tide (they’ve done all my work for years) and I jammed Hilarity into the creek behind their slip, so the Newt didn’t spot me when he came down the river. Then I pulled out and followed him over the Bar. He stood nor-west at once. I let him go till we were well out of sight of land. Then I overhauled him, gave him a gun across the bows and ran alongside. I’d just had my lunch, and I wasn’t going to lose my temper this time. I said: ‘Excuse me, but I understand you are bound for Antigua?’ He was, he said, and as he seemed a little nervous about my falling aboard him in that swell, I gave Hilarity another sheer in—she’s as handy as a launch—and I said: ‘May I suggest that this is not the course for Antigua?’ By that time he had his fenders overside, and all hands yelling at me to keep away. I snatched Hilarity out and began edging in again. He said: ‘I’m trying a sample of inferior oil that I have my doubts about. If it works all right I shall lay my course for Antigua, but it will take some time to test the stuff and adjust the engines to it.’ I said: ‘Very good, let me know if I can be of any service,’ and I offered him Hilarity again once or twice—he didn’t want her—and then I dropped behind and let him go on. Wasn’t that proper, Portson?”
Portson nodded. “I know that game of yours with Hilarity,” he said. “How the deuce do you do it? My nerve always goes at close quarters in any sea.”
“It’s only a little trick of steering,” Maddingham replied with a simper of vanity. “You can almost shave with her when she feels like it. I had to do it again that same evening, to establish a moral ascendancy. He wasn’t showing any lights, and I nearly tripped over him. He was a scared Neutral for three minutes, but I got a little of my own back for that damned court-martial. But I was perfectly polite. I apologised profusely. I didn’t even ask him to show his lights.”
“But did he?” said Winchmore.
“He did—every one; and a flare now and then,” Maddingham replied. “He held north all that night, with a falling barometer and a rising wind and all the other filthy things. Gad, how I hated him! Next morning we got it, good and tight from the nor-nor-west out of the Atlantic, off Carso Head. He dodged into a squall, and then he went about. We weren’t a mile behind, but it was as thick as a wall. When it cleared, and I couldn’t see him ahead of me, I went about too, and followed the rain. I picked him up five miles down wind, legging it for all he was worth to the south’ard—nine knots, I should think. Hilarity doesn’t like a following sea. We got pooped a bit, but by noon we’d struggled back to where we ought to have been—two cables astern of him. Then he began to signal, but his flags being end-on to us, of course, we had to creep up on his beam—well abeam—to read ’em. That didn’t restore his morale either. He made out he’d been compelled to put back by stress of weather before completing his oil tests. I made back I was sorry to hear it, but would be greatly interested in the results. Then I turned in (I’d been up all night) and my lootenant took on. He was a widower (by the way) of the name of Sherrin, aged forty-seven. He’d run a girls’ school at Weston-super-Mare after he’d left the Service in ’ninety-five, and he believed the English were the Lost Tribes.”
“What about the Germans?” said Portson.
“Oh, they’d been misled by Austria, who was the Beast with Horns in Revelations. Otherwise he was rather a dull dog. He set the tops’ls in his watch. Hilarity won’t steer under any canvas, so we rather sported round our friend that afternoon, I believe. When I came up after dinner, she was biting his behind, first one side, then the other. Let’s see—that would be about thirty miles east-sou-east of Harry Island. We were running as near as nothing south. The wind had dropped, and there was a useful cross-rip coming up from the south-east. I took the wheel and, the way I nursed him from starboard, he had to take the sea over his port bow. I had my sciatica on me—buccaneering’s no game for a middle-aged man—but I gave that fellow sprudel! By Jove; I washed him out! He stood it as long as he could, and then he made a bolt for Harry Island. I had to ride in his pocket most of the way there because I didn’t know that coast. We had charts, but Sherrin never understood ’em, and I couldn’t leave the wheel. So we rubbed along together, and about midnight this Newt dodged in over the tail of Harry Shoals and anchored, if you please, in the lee of the Double Ricks. It was dead calm there, except for the swell, but there wasn’t much room to manœuvre in, and I wasn’t going to anchor. It looked too like a submarine rendezvous. But first, I came alongside and asked him what his trouble was. He told me he had overheated his something-or-other bulb. I’ve never been shipmates with Diesel engines, but I took his word for it, and I said I ’ud stand by till it cooled. Then he told me to go to hell.”
“If you were inside the Double Ricks in the dark, you were practically there,” said Portson.
“That’s what I thought. I was on the bridge, rabid with sciatica, going round and round like a circus-horse in about three acres of water, and wondering when I’d hit something. Ridiculous position. Sherrin saw it. He saved me. He said it was an ideal place for submarine attacks, and we’d better begin to repel ’em at once. As I said, I couldn’t leave the wheel, so Sherrin fought the ship—both quick-firers and the maxims. He tipped ’em well down into the sea or well up at the Ricks as we went round and round. We made rather a row; and the row the gulls made when we woke ’em was absolutely terrifying. ’Give you my word!”
“And then?” said Winchmore.
“I kept on running in circles through this ghastly din. I took one sheer over towards his stern—I thought I’d cut it too fine, but we missed it by inches. Then I heard his capstan busy, and in another three minutes his anchor was up. He didn’t wait to stow. He hustled out as he was—bulb or no bulb. He passed within ten feet of us (I was waiting to fall in behind him) and he shouted over the rail: ‘You think you’ve got patriotism. All you’ve got is uric acid and rotten spite!’ I expect he was a little bored. I waited till we had cleared Harry Shoals before I went below, and then I slept till 9 A. M. He was heading north this time, and after I’d had breakfast and a smoke I ran alongside and asked him where he was bound for now. He was wrapped in a comforter, evidently suffering from a bad cold. I couldn’t quite catch what he said, but I let him croak for a few minutes and fell back. At 9 P. M. he turned round and headed south (I was getting to know the Irish Channel by then) and I followed. There was no particular sea on. It was a little chilly, but as he didn’t hug the coast I hadn’t to take the wheel. I stayed below most of the night and let Sherrin suffer. Well, Mr. Newt kept up this game all the next day, dodging up and down the Irish Channel. And it was infernally dull. He threw up the sponge off Cloone Harbour. That was on Friday morning. He signalled: ‘Developed defects in engine-room. Antigua trip abandoned.’ Then he ran into Cloone and tied up at Brady’s Wharf. You know you can’t repair a dinghy at Cloone! I followed, of course, and berthed behind him. After lunch I thought I’d pay him a call. I wanted to look at his engines. I don’t understand Diesels, but Hyslop, my engineer, said they must have gone round ’em with a hammer, for they were pretty badly smashed up. Besides that they had offered all their oil to the Admiralty agent there, and it was being shifted to a tug when I went aboard him. So I’d done my job. I was just going back to Hilarity when his steward said he’d like to see me. He was lying in his cabin breathing pretty loud—wrapped up in rugs and his eyes sticking out like a rabbit’s. He offered me drinks. I couldn’t accept ’em, of course. Then he said: ‘Well, Mr. Maddingham, I’m all in.’ I said I was glad to hear it. Then he told me he was seriously ill with a sudden attack of bronchial pneumonia, and he asked me to run him across to England to see his doctor in town. I said, of course, that was out of the question, Hilarity being a man-of-war in commission. He couldn’t see it. He asked what had that to do with it? He thought this war was some sort of joke, and I had to repeat it all over again. He seemed rather afraid of dying (it’s no game for a middle-aged man, of course) and he hoisted himself up on one elbow and began calling me a murderer. I explained to him—perfectly politely—that I wasn’t in this job for fun. It was business. My orders were to see that he went to Antigua, and now that he wasn’t going to Antigua, and had sold his oil to us, that finished it as far as I was concerned. (Wasn’t that perfectly correct?) He said: ‘But that finishes me, too. I can’t get any doctor in this God-forsaken hole. I made sure you’d treat me properly as soon as I surrendered.’ I said there wasn’t any question of surrender. If he’d been a wounded belligerent, I might have taken him aboard, though I certainly shouldn’t have gone a yard out of my course to land him anywhere; but as it was, he was a neutral—altogether outside the game. You see my point? I tried awfully hard to make him understand it. He went on about his affairs all being at loose ends. He was a rich man—a million and a quarter, he said—and he wanted to redraft his will before he died. I told him a good many people were in his position just now—only they weren’t rich. He changed his tack then and appealed to me on the grounds of our common humanity. ‘Why, if you leave me now, Mr. Maddingham,’ he said, ‘you condemn me to death, just as surely as if you hanged me.’”
“This is interesting,” Portson murmured. “I never imagined you in this light before, Maddingham.”
“I was surprised at myself—’give you my word. But I was perfectly polite. I said to him: ‘Try to be reasonable, sir. If you had got rid of your oil where it was wanted, you’d have condemned lots of people to death just as surely as if you’d drowned ’em.’ ‘Ah, but I didn’t,’ he said. ‘That ought to count in my favour.’ ‘That was no thanks to you,’ I said. ‘You weren’t given the chance. This is war, sir. If you make up your mind to that, you’ll see that the rest follows.’ ‘I didn’t imagine you’d take it as seriously as all that,’ he said—and he said it quite seriously, too. ‘Show a little consideration. Your side’s bound to win anyway.’ I said: ‘Look here! I’m a middle-aged man, and I don’t suppose my conscience is any clearer than yours in many respects, but this is business. I can do nothing for you.’”
“You got that a bit mixed, I think,” said Tegg critically.
“He saw what I was driving at,” Maddingham replied, “and he was the only one that mattered for the moment. ‘Then I’m a dead man, Mr. Maddingham,’ he said. ‘That’s your business,’ I said. ‘Good afternoon.’ And I went out.”
“And?” said Winchmore, after some silence.
“He died. I saw his flag half-masted next morning.”
There was another silence. Henri looked in at the alcove and smiled. Maddingham beckoned to him.
“But why didn’t you lend him a hand to settle his private affairs?” said Portson.
“Because I wasn’t acting in my private capacity. I’d been on the bridge for three nights and—” Maddingham pulled out his watch—“this time to-morrow I shall be there again—confound it! Has my car come, Henri?”
“Yes, Sare Francis. I am sorry.” They all complimented Henri on the dinner, and when the compliments were paid he expressed himself still their debtor. So did the nephew.
“Are you coming with me, Portson?” said Maddingham as he rose heavily.
“No. I’m for Southampton, worse luck! My car ought to be here, too.”
“I’m for Euston and the frigid calculating North,” said Winchmore with a shudder. “One common taxi, please, Henri.”
Tegg smiled. “I’m supposed to sleep in just now, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to come with you as far as Gravesend, Maddingham.”
“Delighted. There’s a glass all round left still,” said Maddingham. “Here’s luck! The usual, I suppose? ‘Damnation to all neutrals!’”
utorak, 8. rujna 2026.
nedjelja, 6. rujna 2026.
subota, 5. rujna 2026.
petak, 4. rujna 2026.
FIVE AMERICANS I. LIZ I with breathing as (faithfully) her lownecked dress a little topples and slightly expands one square foot mired in silk wrinkling loth stocking begins queerly to do a few gestures to death, the silent shoulders are both slowly with pinkish ponderous arms bedecked whose white thick wrists deliver promptly to a deep lap enormous mindless hands. and no one knows what (i am sure of this) her blunt unslender, what her big unkeen “Business is rotten” the face yawning said what her mouth thinks of (if it were a kiss distinct entirely melting sinuous lean . . . whereof this lady in some book had read
IS FIVE by E. E. Cummings
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/77021/pg77021-images.html
the season ’tis, my lovely lambs,
of Sumner Volstead Christ and Co.
the epoch of Mann’s righteousness
the age of dollars and no sense.
Which being quite beyond dispute
as prove from Troy (N. Y.) to Cairo
(Egypt) the luminous dithyrambs
of large immaculate unmute
antibolshevistic gents
(each manufacturing word by word
his own unrivalled brand of pyro
-technic blurb anent the (hic)
hero dead that gladly (sic)
in far lands perished of unheard
of maladies including flu)
my little darlings, let us now
passionately remember how—
braving the worst, of peril heedless,
each braver than the other, each
(a typewriter within his reach)
upon his fearless derrière
sturdily seated—Colonel Needless
To Name and General You know who
a string of pretty medals drew
(while messrs jack james john and jim
in token of their country’s love
received my dears the order of
The Artificial Arm and Limb)
—or, since bloodshed and kindred questions
inhibit unprepared digestions,
come:let us mildly contemplate
beginning with his wellfilled pants
earth’s biggest grafter, nothing less;
the Honorable Mr. (guess)
who, breathing on the ear of fate,
landed a seat in the legislat-
ure whereas tommy so and so
(an erring child of circumstance
whom the bulls nabbed at 33rd)
pulled six months for selling snow
četvrtak, 3. rujna 2026.
srijeda, 2. rujna 2026.
"My heart is fixed firm and stable in the belief that ultimately the sunshine and the summer, the flowers and the azure sky, shall become, as it were, interwoven into man's existence. He shall take from all their beauty and enjoy their glory."—RICHARD JEFFERIES: The Life of the Fields. It was the little lad that asked the question; and the answer also, as you will see, was mainly his. We had been keeping Sunday afternoon together in our favourite fashion, following out that pleasant text which tells us to "behold the fowls of the air." There is no injunction of Holy Writ less burdensome in acceptance, or more profitable in obedience, than this easy out-of-doors commandment. For several hours we walked in the way of this precept, through the untangled woods that lie behind the Forest Hills Lodge, where a pair of pigeon-hawks had their nest; and around the brambly shores of the small pond, where Maryland yellow-throats and song-sparrows were settled; and under the lofty hemlocks of the fragment of forest across the road, where rare warblers flitted silently among the tree-tops. The light beneath the evergreens was growing dim as we came out from their shadow into the widespread glow of the sunset, on the edge of a grassy hill, overlooking the long valley of the Gale River, and uplooking to the Franconia Mountains.
It was the benediction hour. The placid air of the day shed a new tranquillity over the consoling landscape. The heart of the earth seemed to taste a repose more perfect than that of common days. A hermit-thrush, far up the vale, sang his vesper hymn; while the swallows, seeking their evening meal, circled above the river-fields without an effort, twittering softly, now and then, as if they must give thanks. Slight and indefinable touches in the scene, perhaps the mere absence of the tiny human figures passing along the road or labouring in the distant meadows, perhaps the blue curls of smoke rising lazily from the farmhouse chimneys, or the family groups sitting under the maple-trees before the door, diffused a sabbath atmosphere over the world.
Then said the lad, lying on the grass beside me, "Father, who owns the mountains?"
I happened to have heard, the day before, of two or three lumber companies that had bought some of the woodland slopes; so I told him their names, adding that there were probably a good many different owners, whose claims taken all together would cover the whole Franconia range of hills.
"Well," answered the lad, after a moment of silence, "I don't see what difference that makes. Everybody can look at them."
They lay stretched out before us in the level sunlight, the sharp peaks outlined against the sky, the vast ridges of forest sinking smoothly towards the valleys, the deep hollows gathering purple shadows in their bosoms, and the little foothills standing out in rounded promontories of brighter green from the darker mass behind them.
Far to the east, the long comb of Twin Mountain extended itself back into the untrodden wilderness. Mount Garfield lifted a clear-cut pyramid through the translucent air. The huge bulk of Lafayette ascended majestically in front of us, crowned with a rosy diadem of rocks. Eagle Cliff and Bald Mountain stretched their line of scalloped peaks across the entrance to the Notch. Beyond that shadowy vale, the swelling summits of Cannon Mountain rolled away to meet the tumbling waves of Kinsman, dominated by one loftier crested billow that seemed almost ready to curl and break out of green silence into snowy foam. Far down the sleeping Landaff valley the undulating dome of Moosilauke trembled in the distant blue.
They were all ours, from crested cliff to wooded base. The solemn groves of firs and spruces, the plumed sierras of lofty pines, the stately pillared forests of birch and beech, the wild ravines, the tremulous thickets of silvery poplar, the bare peaks with their wide outlooks, and the cool vales resounding with the ceaseless song of little rivers,—we knew and loved them all; they ministered peace and joy to us; they were all ours, though we held no title deeds and our ownership had never been recorded.
What is property, after all? The law says there are two kinds, real and personal. But it seems to me that the only real property is that which is truly personal, that which we take into our inner life and make our own forever, by understanding and admiration and sympathy and love. This is the only kind of possession that is worth anything.
A gallery of great paintings adorns the house of the Honourable Midas Bond, and every year adds a new treasure to his collection. He knows how much they cost him, and he keeps the run of the quotations at the auction sales, congratulating himself as the price of the works of his well-chosen artists rises in the scale, and the value of his art treasures is enhanced. But why should he call them his? He is only their custodian. He keeps them well varnished, and framed in gilt. But he never passes through those gilded frames into the world of beauty that lies behind the painted canvas. He knows nothing of those lovely places from which the artist's soul and hand have drawn their inspiration. They are closed and barred to him. He has bought the pictures, but he cannot buy the key. The poor art student who wanders through his gallery, lingering with awe and love before the masterpieces, owns them far more truly than Midas does.
Pomposus Silverman purchased a rich library a few years ago. The books were rare and costly. That was the reason why Pomposus bought them. He was proud to feel that he was the possessor of literary treasures which were not to be found in the houses of his wealthiest acquaintances. But the threadbare Bucherfreund, who was engaged at a slender salary to catalogue the library and take care of it, became the real proprietor. Pomposus paid for the books, but Bucherfreund enjoyed them.
I do not mean to say that the possession of much money is always a barrier to real wealth of mind and heart. Nor would I maintain that all the poor of this world are rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom. But some of them are. And if some of the rich of this world (through the grace of Him with whom all things are possible) are also modest in their tastes, and gentle in their hearts, and open in their minds, and ready to be pleased with unbought pleasures, they simply share in the best things which are provided for all.
I speak not now of the strife that men wage over the definition and the laws of property. Doubtless there is much here that needs to be set right. There are men and women in the world who are shut out from the right to earn a living, so poor that they must perish for want of daily bread, so full of misery that there is no room for the tiniest seed of joy in their lives. This is the lingering shame of civilization. Some day, perhaps, we shall find the way to banish it. Some day, every man shall have his title to a share in the world's great work and the world's large joy.
But meantime it is certain that, where there are a hundred poor bodies who suffer from physical privation, there are a thousand poor souls who suffer from spiritual poverty. To relive this greater suffering there needs no change of laws, only a change of heart.
What does it profit a man to be the landed proprietor of countless acres unless he can reap the harvest of delight that blooms from every rood of God's earth for the seeing eye and the loving spirit? And who can reap that harvest so closely that there shall not be abundant gleaning left for all mankind? The most that a wide estate can yield to its legal owner is a living. But the real owner can gather from a field of goldenrod, shining in the August sunlight, an unearned increment of delight.
We measure success by accumulation. The measure is false. The true measure is appreciation. He who loves most has most.
How foolishly we train ourselves for the work of life! We give our most arduous and eager efforts to the cultivation of those faculties which will serve us in the competitions of the forum and the market-place. But if we were wise, we should care infinitely more for the unfolding of those inward, secret, spiritual powers by which alone we can become the owners of anything that is worth having. Surely God is the great proprietor. Yet all His works He has given away. He holds no title-deeds. The one thing that is His, is the perfect understanding, the perfect joy, the perfect love, of all things that He has made. To a share in this high ownership He welcomes all who are poor in spirit. This is the earth which the meek inherit. This is the patrimony of the saints in light.
"Come, laddie," I said to my comrade, "let us go home. You and I are very rich. We own the mountains. But we can never sell them, and we don't want to."
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