________________________________________________
_ I have tried to put some connection into the various things
Captain Nichols told me about Strickland, and I here set them
down in the best order I can. They made one another's
acquaintance during the latter part of the winter following my
last meeting with Strickland in Paris. How he had passed the
intervening months I do not know, but life must have been very
hard, for Captain Nichols saw him first in the Asile de Nuit.
There was a strike at Marseilles at the time, and Strickland,
having come to the end of his resources, had apparently found
it impossible to earn the small sum he needed to keep body and
soul together.
The Asile de Nuit is a large stone building where pauper and
vagabond may get a bed for a week, provided their papers are
in order and they can persuade the friars in charge that they
are workingmen. Captain Nichols noticed Strickland for his
size and his singular appearance among the crowd that waited
for the doors to open; they waited listlessly, some walking to
and fro, some leaning against the wall, and others seated on
the curb with their feet in the gutter; and when they filed
into the office he heard the monk who read his papers address
him in English. But he did not have a chance to speak to him,
since, as he entered the common-room, a monk came in with a
huge Bible in his arms, mounted a pulpit which was at the end
of the room, and began the service which the wretched outcasts
had to endure as the price of their lodging. He and
Strickland were assigned to different rooms, and when, thrown
out of bed at five in the morning by a stalwart monk, he had made
his bed and washed his face, Strickland had already disappeared.
Captain Nichols wandered about the streets for an hour of
bitter cold, and then made his way to the Place Victor Gelu,
where the sailor-men are wont to congregate. Dozing against
the pedestal of a statue, he saw Strickland again.
He gave him a kick to awaken him.
"Come and have breakfast, mate," he said.
"Go to hell," answered Strickland.
I recognised my friend's limited vocabulary, and I prepared to
regard Captain Nichols as a trustworthy witness.
"Busted?" asked the Captain.
"Blast you," answered Strickland.
"Come along with me. I'll get you some breakfast."
After a moment's hesitation, Strickland scrambled to his feet,
and together they went to the Bouchee de Pain, where the
hungry are given a wedge of bread, which they must eat there
and then, for it is forbidden to take it away; and then to the
Cuillere de Soupe, where for a week, at eleven and four,
you may get a bowl of thin, salt soup. The two buildings are
placed far apart, so that only the starving should be tempted
to make use of them. So they had breakfast, and so began the
queer companionship of Charles Strickland and Captain Nichols.
They must have spent something like four months at Marseilles
in one another's society. Their career was devoid of adventure,
if by adventure you mean unexpected or thrilling incident,
for their days were occupied in the pursuit of enough
money to get a night's lodging and such food as would stay
the pangs of hunger. But I wish I could give here the pictures,
coloured and racy, which Captain Nichols' vivid narrative
offered to the imagination. His account of their discoveries
in the low life of a seaport town would have made a
charming book, and in the various characters that came their
way the student might easily have found matter for a very
complete dictionary of rogues. But I must content myself with
a few paragraphs. I received the impression of a life intense
and brutal, savage, multicoloured, and vivacious. It made the
Marseilles that I knew, gesticulating and sunny, with its
comfortable hotels and its restaurants crowded with the well-to-do,
tame and commonplace. I envied men who had seen with their
own eyes the sights that Captain Nichols described.
When the doors of the Asile de Nuit were closed to them,
Strickland and Captain Nichols sought the hospitality of Tough Bill.
This was the master of a sailors' boarding-house, a huge
mulatto with a heavy fist, who gave the stranded mariner
food and shelter till he found him a berth. They lived with
him a month, sleeping with a dozen others, Swedes, negroes,
Brazilians, on the floor of the two bare rooms in his house
which he assigned to his charges; and every day they went with
him to the Place Victor Gelu, whither came ships' captains in
search of a man. He was married to an American woman, obese
and slatternly, fallen to this pass by Heaven knows what
process of degradation, and every day the boarders took it in
turns to help her with the housework. Captain Nichols looked
upon it as a smart piece of work on Strickland's part that he
had got out of this by painting a portrait of Tough Bill.
Tough Bill not only paid for the canvas, colours, and brushes,
but gave Strickland a pound of smuggled tobacco into the
bargain. For all I know, this picture may still adorn the
parlour of the tumbledown little house somewhere near the
Quai de la Joliette, and I suppose it could now be sold for
fifteen hundred pounds. Strickland's idea was to ship on some
vessel bound for Australia or New Zealand, and from there make his
way to Samoa or Tahiti. I do not know how he had come upon
the notion of going to the South Seas, though I remember that
his imagination had long been haunted by an island, all green
and sunny, encircled by a sea more blue than is found in
Northern latitudes. I suppose that he clung to Captain
Nichols because he was acquainted with those parts, and it was
Captain Nichols who persuaded him that he would be more
comfortable in Tahiti.
"You see, Tahiti's French," he explained to me. "And the
French aren't so damned technical."
I thought I saw his point.
Strickland had no papers, but that was not a matter to
disconcert Tough Bill when he saw a profit (he took the first
month's wages of the sailor for whom he found a berth), and he
provided Strickland with those of an English stoker who had
providentially died on his hands. But both Captain Nichols
and Strickland were bound East, and it chanced that the only
opportunities for signing on were with ships sailing West.
Twice Strickland refused a berth on tramps sailing for the
United States, and once on a collier going to Newcastle.
Tough Bill had no patience with an obstinacy which could only
result in loss to himself, and on the last occasion he flung
both Strickland and Captain Nichols out of his house without
more ado. They found themselves once more adrift.
Tough Bill's fare was seldom extravagant, and you rose from
his table almost as hungry as you sat down, but for some days
they had good reason to regret it. They learned what hunger was.
The Cuillere de Soupe and the Asile de Nuit were both
closed to them, and their only sustenance was the wedge of
bread which the Bouchee de Pain provided. They slept where
they could, sometimes in an empty truck on a siding near the
station, sometimes in a cart behind a warehouse; but it was
bitterly cold, and after an hour or two of uneasy dozing they
would tramp the streets again. What they felt the lack of
most bitterly was tobacco, and Captain Nichols, for his part,
could not do without it; he took to hunting the "Can o' Beer,"
for cigarette-ends and the butt-end of cigars which the
promenaders of the night before had thrown away.
"I've tasted worse smoking mixtures in a pipe," he added,
with a philosophic shrug of his shoulders, as he took a couple
of cigars from the case I offered him, putting one in his mouth
and the other in his pocket.
Now and then they made a bit of money. Sometimes a mail
steamer would come in, and Captain Nichols, having scraped
acquaintance with the timekeeper, would succeed in getting the
pair of them a job as stevedores. When it was an English boat,
they would dodge into the forecastle and get a hearty
breakfast from the crew. They took the risk of running
against one of the ship's officers and being hustled down the
gangway with the toe of a boot to speed their going.
"There's no harm in a kick in the hindquarters when your
belly's full," said Captain Nichols, "and personally I never
take it in bad part. An officer's got to think about discipline."
I had a lively picture of Captain Nichols flying headlong down
a narrow gangway before the uplifted foot of an angry mate,
and, like a true Englishman, rejoicing in the spirit of the
Mercantile Marine.
There were often odd jobs to be got about the fish-market.
Once they each of them earned a franc by loading trucks with
innumerable boxes of oranges that had been dumped down on the quay.
One day they had a stroke of luck: one of the boarding-masters
got a contract to paint a tramp that had come in
from Madagascar round the Cape of Good Hope, and they spent
several days on a plank hanging over the side, covering the
rusty hull with paint. It was a situation that must have
appealed to Strickland's sardonic humour. I asked Captain
Nichols how he bore himself during these hardships.
"Never knew him say a cross word," answered the Captain.
"He'd be a bit surly sometimes, but when we hadn't had a bite
since morning, and we hadn't even got the price of a lie down
at the Chink's, he'd be as lively as a cricket."
I was not surprised at this. Strickland was just the man to
rise superior to circumstances, when they were such as to
occasion despondency in most; but whether this was due to
equanimity of soul or to contradictoriness it would be
difficult to say.
The Chink's Head was a name the beach-combers gave to a
wretched inn off the Rue Bouterie, kept by a one-eyed Chinaman,
where for six sous you could sleep in a cot and for
three on the floor. Here they made friends with others in as
desperate condition as themselves, and when they were
penniless and the night was bitter cold, they were glad to
borrow from anyone who had earned a stray franc during the day
the price of a roof over their heads. They were not niggardly,
these tramps, and he who had money did not hesitate
to share it among the rest. They belonged to all the
countries in the world, but this was no bar to good-fellowship;
for they felt themselves freemen of a country whose
frontiers include them all, the great country of Cockaine.
"But I guess Strickland was an ugly customer when he was roused,"
said Captain Nichols, reflectively. "One day we ran
into Tough Bill in the Place, and he asked Charlie for the
papers he'd given him."
"`You'd better come and take them if you want them,' says Charlie.
"He was a powerful fellow, Tough Bill, but he didn't quite
like the look of Charlie, so he began cursing him. He called
him pretty near every name he could lay hands on, and when
Tough Bill began cursing it was worth listening to him.
Well, Charlie stuck it for a bit, then he stepped forward and he
just said: `Get out, you bloody swine.' It wasn't so much
what he said, but the way he said it. Tough Bill never spoke
another word; you could see him go yellow, and he walked away
as if he'd remembered he had a date."
Strickland, according to Captain Nichols, did not use exactly
the words I have given, but since this book is meant for
family reading I have thought it better, at the expense of
truth, to put into his mouth expressions familiar to the
domestic circle.
Now, Tough Bill was not the man to put up with humiliation at
the hands of a common sailor. His power depended on his prestige,
and first one, then another, of the sailors who lived in
his house told them that he had sworn to do Strickland in.
One night Captain Nichols and Strickland were sitting in one
of the bars of the Rue Bouterie. The Rue Bouterie is a narrow
street of one-storeyed houses, each house consisting of but
one room; they are like the booths in a crowded fair or the
cages of animals in a circus. At every door you see a woman.
Some lean lazily against the side-posts, humming to themselves
or calling to the passer-by in a raucous voice, and some
listlessly read. They are French. Italian, Spanish,
Japanese, coloured; some are fat and some are thin; and under
the thick paint on their faces, the heavy smears on their
eyebrows, and the scarlet of their lips, you see the lines of
age and the scars of dissipation. Some wear black shifts and
flesh-coloured stockings; some with curly hair, dyed yellow,
are dressed like little girls in short muslin frocks.
Through the open door you see a red-tiled floor, a large wooden bed,
and on a deal table a ewer and a basin. A motley crowd
saunters along the streets -- Lascars off a P. and O., blond
Northmen from a Swedish barque, Japanese from a man-of-war,
English sailors, Spaniards, pleasant-looking fellows from a
French cruiser, negroes off an American tramp. By day it is
merely sordid, but at night, lit only by the lamps in the
little huts, the street has a sinister beauty. The hideous
lust that pervades the air is oppressive and horrible, and yet
there is something mysterious in the sight which haunts and
troubles you. You feel I know not what primitive force which
repels and yet fascinates you. Here all the decencies of
civilisation are swept away, and you feel that men are face to
face with a sombre reality. There is an atmosphere that is at
once intense and tragic.
In the bar in which Strickland and Nichols sat a mechanical
piano was loudly grinding out dance music. Round the room
people were sitting at table, here half a dozen sailors
uproariously drunk, there a group of soldiers; and in the
middle, crowded together, couples were dancing. Bearded
sailors with brown faces and large horny hands clasped their
partners in a tight embrace. The women wore nothing but a shift.
Now and then two sailors would get up and dance together.
The noise was deafening. People were singing, shouting,
laughing; and when a man gave a long kiss to the
girl sitting on his knees, cat-calls from the English sailors
increased the din. The air was heavy with the dust beaten up
by the heavy boots of the men, and gray with smoke. It was
very hot. Behind the bar was seated a woman nursing her baby.
The waiter, an undersized youth with a flat, spotty face,
hurried to and fro carrying a tray laden with glasses of beer.
In a little while Tough Bill, accompanied by two huge negroes,
came in, and it was easy to see that he was already three
parts drunk. He was looking for trouble. He lurched against
a table at which three soldiers were sitting and knocked over
a glass of beer. There was an angry altercation, and the
owner of the bar stepped forward and ordered Tough Bill to go.
He was a hefty fellow, in the habit of standing no nonsense
from his customers, and Tough Bill hesitated. The landlord
was not a man he cared to tackle, for the police were on his side,
and with an oath he turned on his heel. Suddenly he
caught sight of Strickland. He rolled up to him. He did not speak.
He gathered the spittle in his mouth and spat full in
Strickland's face. Strickland seized his glass and flung it
at him. The dancers stopped suddenly still. There was an
instant of complete silence, but when Tough Bill threw himself
on Strickland the lust of battle seized them all, and in a
moment there was a confused scrimmage. Tables were
overturned, glasses crashed to the ground. There was a
hellish row. The women scattered to the door and behind the bar.
Passers-by surged in from the street. You heard curses
in every tongue the sound of blows, cries; and in the middle
of the room a dozen men were fighting with all their might.
On a sudden the police rushed in, and everyone who could made
for the door. When the bar was more or less cleared, Tough
Bill was lying insensible on the floor with a great gash in
his head. Captain Nichols dragged Strickland, bleeding from a
wound in his arm, his clothes in rags, into the street.
His own face was covered with blood from a blow on the nose.
"I guess you'd better get out of Marseilles before Tough Bill
comes out of hospital," he said to Strickland, when they had
got back to the Chink's Head and were cleaning themselves.
"This beats cock-fighting," said Strickland.
I could see his sardonic smile.
Captain Nichols was anxious. He knew Tough Bill's vindictiveness.
Strickland had downed the mulatto twice, and the mulatto,
sober, was a man to be reckoned with. He would bide
his time stealthily. He would be in no hurry, but one
night Strickland would get a knife-thrust in his back, and in
a day or two the corpse of a nameless beach-comber would be
fished out of the dirty water of the harbour. Nichols went
next evening to Tough Bill's house and made enquiries. He was
in hospital still, but his wife, who had been to see him, said
he was swearing hard to kill Strickland when they let him out.
A week passed.
"That's what I always say," reflected Captain Nichols,
"when you hurt a man, hurt him bad. It gives you a bit of
time to look about and think what you'll do next."
Then Strickland had a bit of luck. A ship bound for Australia
had sent to the Sailors' Home for a stoker in place of one who
had thrown himself overboard off Gibraltar in an attack of
delirium tremens.
"You double down to the harbour, my lad," said the Captain to
Strickland, "and sign on. You've got your papers."
Strickland set off at once, and that was the last Captain
Nichols saw of him. The ship was only in port for six hours,
and in the evening Captain Nichols watched the vanishing smoke
from her funnels as she ploughed East through the wintry sea.
I have narrated all this as best I could, because I like the
contrast of these episodes with the life that I had seen
Strickland live in Ashley Gardens when he was occupied with
stocks and shares; but I am aware that Captain Nichols was an
outrageous liar, and I dare say there is not a word of truth
in anything he told me. I should not be surprised to learn
that he had never seen Strickland in his life, and owed his
knowledge of Marseilles to the pages of a magazine. _
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