Part 18

“I must go. Susy, Susy, if you will not have me, in pity’s name let me go!”

“Go then, go, my darling.”

She drew herself out of his arms firmly, sadly, and they stood for a moment looking into each other’s eyes, only for a moment though, then with a long-drawn sigh she turned away and covered her face with her hands.

He stood a little apart and took a long farewell to all his hopes. Would the picture ever fade from his mind, he wondered. There it all lay before him, blue sea and sky and dark bushland, and the only living thing visible the trembling girl in her simple pink frock, her face hidden in her hands, and the sunlight bringing out lines of gold in her fair hair. So it ended--his month-old romance. To-day he must go back to the old dull routine that makes up the sum of a sailor’s life, and this brief madness must be but a tender memory of the past.

“Susy,” he whispered, “Susy,” but the little figure never raised its head.

“Susy, won’t you wish me good-bye. Say something to me before I go. Must I go?”

He had no hope she would change her mind. He had learned her steadfastness only too well in the last four weeks, only he asked because it gave him the faintest shadow of an excuse for stopping at her side.

“Yes, go, go!” And the command was almost prayerful in its intensity.

“But--but--one word--one word--you--”

“God bless you! God keep you! Go, go!”

He turned away then, away from the bright water sparkling in the sunlight, away from the woman he loved with all his strength; but a chimera, it seemed to him, a vague fancy, stood between them, yet it was stronger than iron bars, and with a heavy sigh he turned his face towards the dark ranges and went down to the township, five miles beyond.

The good ship Vanity had lain three long months at Port Melbourne Pier, but they were weighing anchor at last. Standing there on the poop, the second mate listened sadly enough to the chanting of the men as they walked slowly round the capstan. There was almost a wail in the tune, though the words were the essence of common-placeness, and related how the singers had courted Sally Brown for seven years, and when she had proved obdurate, with great complacency had taken her daughter instead.

“Seven long years I courted Sally, Ay, ay, roll and go! Seven long years and she wouldn’t marry, Spend my money on Sally Brown.”

“Ay! ay!” it rose loud and clear above the noise of the busy pier, above the voices of the men at work there, above the creaking and groaning of the crane that was loading the great iron tank that lay next them, “ay! ay! roll and go!”

Yes, he was going now, leaving all the sunshine of his life behind him, the best part of his life and--

“Now then, mister, bear a hand there, ain’t there longshore lubbers enough wi’out you?”

“Ay! ay! roll and go!” It was only another way of saying “Blessed be drudgery,” only a reminder that work is a universal panacea for all ills and heartaches. And after all the second mate of the sailing-ship is not likely to have much time for idle dreams--regretful or otherwise--for the life of such men is monotonous enough; and two days later when they had come through the Rip, and were out in the Southern Ocean sailing along eastward, there was little enough to remind Ben Harper of the events of a week before. True it was on this stern, forbidding coast lay the Mackie selection; it was over this expanse of sea they two had stood and looked when they said farewell--he had even heard tell that the lights from their cottage window, the bright glow from the kitchen fire, were plainly visible to ships at sea, so close was she. And he wondered to himself should he see those lights to-night. Hardly. He lay there in his bunk and listened to the row in the rigging. Things had not mended evidently since he went below. Gone was the summer and the bright November sunshine, the wind from the south was coming up cold and chill, and the prospect of four hours to-night on a very cold, wet, bleak poop was anything but inviting.

“It ‘s just going eight bells, sir.” He scrambled out of his bunk and into some clothes and oilskins, and was standing alongside the mate under the lee of the weather cloth in the rigging, by the time the watch got aft. They were the average crew of a sailing ship, men from every nation under the sun, and as they passed slowly round the capstan, their shoulders hunched to their ears, each man answered sullenly to his name. Not that they bore the second mate any ill-will, but Jack ashore spends his last weeks in riotous living and suffers a slow recovery for the first few days of the voyage. Besides the night was bitter cold, the wind that whistled shrilly through the rigging already bore on its chill breath drops of icy rain; there was no prospect of things mending, and after the hot summer days at Port Melbourne extra wraps--indeed any clothes in the fo’c’sle beyond what each man stood up in--were conspicuous by their absence. Merchant Jack is a thriftless beggar at best, and who could have foreseen wintry weather like this?

“Andersen!” called the mate, as a tall, fair haired Swede, his hairy breast bare to the cold night air, stepped forward.

“Sir.”

“Muntz!”

“Herr.”

“Reed!”

“‘Ere, sir.”

“Portross!”

“Sah-h.”

What a motley crew they were! Swedes and Germans, cockneys and niggers, they passed on till the two watches had answered to their names, and the last man was a Russian Finn, black-haired and swarthy, with a flat face and eyes like a Tartar.

“They Finns,” said the bo’sun confidentially to Harper, “is just pisen. Never knew no ship come to any good as carried em.