WATERFRONT TALES

Evening Star, Issue 21724, 19 May 1934, Page 21

WATERFRONT TALES

TWO RARE RECIPES SOME SEA PARABLES [By T.S.] “ By a stroke of good luck the other day,” the Old-timer informed his mates, “ I came across the recipes for ‘ dandyfunk ’ and ‘ dogsbody.’ ” “ The real thing; you’re not funning us,” inquired “ Little ” Joe, with anxious concern. Joe held there were certain things about seafaring that should not be taken lightly. If the Old-timer had been so lucky as to put his hands on the recipes mentioned it meant much to sailormen. It meant, too, that the coming generations would not be deprived of their ancestors’ dandyfunk and dogsbody. For those were probably tbe two most wonderful dishes ever invented by the mind of man. As a matter of fact, nobody could say it was not dandyfunk and dogsbody made Britain mistress of the seas.

“ I came across the recipes the other day,” continued the Old-timer, “ and they look like the real thing. Of course, there is room to add a breast of Mollyhawk, a slice of shark meat, or a fillet of bonitor.” His mates got ready with paper and pencil to write down the prized recipes, so ho read slowly : “ Dogsbody is made of three ingredients—butter, marmalade, broken biscuits, and sugar—baked as a cake, together with some currants, if you can get them.” “ Pea soup, thickened with broken biscuit, with, a slice of pork on top, baked until brown, and then cut in pieces like a pie, is the composition of dandyfunk.” The Old-timer looked round for his mates’ approval, which was not forthcoming so readily as he evidently expected. But they had not yet reached the approval stage. They were expectant. . “Go on,” urged the pupils, wetting their pencils to record the details of the outlined recipes. “Go on what-—where?” asked the recipe expounder, who resented the others’ urging. “Do you want it worked out in logorathems; or want me to make it for you,?” Hence the episode of the rediscovered recipes of the sea closed coldly. “ Nofv I am going to give you a few parables of the sea I’ve collected,” said the Old-timer oracularly; “for we old sea dogs arc a world-wide brotherhood of lovers, and the sea was always our sweet .”

“ Full and by,” interjected Little Joe, warningly, “full and by, Oldtimer.” , “ In tbe bygone days we loved lier, ’ persisted tbe Old-timer. “ And deserted her,” added Little Joe grimly. “ Get on witli the parables.”

THE PARABLES. “ I became conscious of rather an unusual sort of §ound, one of those sounds which—like the solemn ticking of a clock high up in the belfry of an empty church—you have been aware of in a kind of sub-conscious fashion before your brain has given it a name. The sound was the sound of ticking. Not of one clock, but of many, yet quite different from that with which one is familiar in an ordinary watchmaker’s. For there some of the timepieces are fast and some are slow ; some tick loudly and solemnly, some hurriedly and breathlessly as though they had been running. But here, in this London shop, and yet not a shop, it was different. The difference was like a crowd of people all talking at once, and the ordered intoning of a choir. From floor to ceiling the walls are lined with little boxes each bearing a number on a small brass or bone plate. And these boxes contain ships’ chronometers. There they are, dozens and dozens of them, steadily ticking away in perfect- unison, in their delicately poised gimbals. And beautiful they arc, with the beauty that belongs to fine craftsmanship and perfect suitability for a particular purpose. The most reliable timekeepers in the world, outside of tho great clock of Greenwich Observatory, of which they are the lesser satellites. Most of them had been round tho world many times; some in the sailing ship era, but still with years of useful service yet before them. In reply' to a question the attendant said: ‘ Right to tho fraction of a second—Greenwich time. We don’t take notice of summer time here.’ ” HUNGRY FROM THE SEA. “ Speaking of tJiat first night ashore. Having at length comprehended our order of three Jiam-and-eggs on each of our plates, the waitress set a couple of big loaves of crisp .French bread on to the table and went olf to see about the ham and eggs. Looking towards us while they were frying, she saw no bread on the table, and supposing she’d forgotten to bring us any, brought two more big loaves. Pretty soon she looked our way again, and again saw no bread. So once more she brought two loaves. Everyone in the restaurant was now looking at us. But we were unconscious of their stares, lor we were young fellows and had been tuned up to a line eating trim by three months at sea on the lime-juicer we had left a few minutes before. The reaction of three months of sea rations was upon us, and the ham and eggs seemed so long 111 coming wo' had started right away on the soft tack. SECOND MATE’S PARABLE. “ The Seven Kings was a ‘ hell ship,’ and never had she shipped a crew, tho majority of whom had not been brought on board drunk or drugged, by the crimps and runners to whom her captain iiad paid ‘ blood money.’ At every port she shipped a fresh crew to her captain’s profit. In fo’castles and boarding houses sailors swore vengeance against her brutal captain and ‘ bucko ’ mates —but tho law never caught up with them, and sailors’ memories are short. “On the arrival of the Seven Kings, Sacramento Annie boarded the barque in the interests of her sailors’ boarding house. She was big and muscular, and could handle a refractory sailor, as easily as a sailor handled a ‘ pantile ’ biscuit in the dog watch. Nobody was about when the robust boarding mistress came on board; only the second mate on the poop. Annie walked aft towards him.

“ Come down, ye loafin’ scum and tell me where’s the captain,” she hailed him. ■ >.

He replied with a volley of lurid invective, and made for the poop ladder to descend to the main deck where Annie was. But Annie was as keen for the meeting as he, and hopping up the ladder met him on the poop before he had time to descend. He reached out to seize her by the throat and met a chopping blow that sent him staggering back a dozen feet. He was the ship’s champion “ slogger,” but his gameness was overmatched by Sacramento Annie’s fury, his professional skill turned to nought by her unorthodox methods. “ ’Tis the skipper f want to see, not to fool with a wluppersnappor like ye,” she warned him. ‘‘Out of me

way or ye’ll be hurt.” She knocked off his cap. Then, with one hand she gripped his hair with painful strength and with the other hand clenched she landed him one on the ear that staggered him. Before he had recovered she pushed that second mate out of her way, and proceeded to interview the captain on the sordid subject of shanghai-ing. A NOTABLE FLOTILLA. Ho was a" boy on a training ship, and it was going on a cruise. His mother had sent him a big basket of home-tuck, and there was no place to stow it away out of sight of the captain on the* daily round of inspection. At last he thought of a cupboard hollowed out of a huge oak tree protruding from the ship’s timbers, down in the “ library ” below the water line. He i had been appointed librarian. That cupboard, years ago, had been filled with Bibles—musty, soggy Bibles, marred by the great red stamps of an admirable society. These Bibles, were below the water lino of the hull. They had been there in dank confinement for nearly twenty years. A great resolve half-shifted conscience and gave relief. The locker was opened, also tbe port, and the Bibles began to drop through the opened port. Suddenly there was a rap at the door. The last Bible had been pushed into the water —the Bibles making room for the luxuries in the basket. “ What in the name of h are you doing?” a voice called through tho lattice. lie opened cautiously. It was his chum, Dick. “ Come on, quick,” he said. They gained the spar deck and stepped to the port gangway. A few feet from the ship, on the East River, with the Hood of the tide, was a fleet of fifty boating Bibles, stretching a quarter of a mile and drifting in single file toward Hell Gate. “My G , Dick, I thought they would sink,” he exclaimed. For half an hour they stood breathless, lest the officer of tho deck walk to port and sight that slowly departing flotilla of the Gospel. LOAFING NOT ALLOWED. , The full rfggcd ship was running before it. A more cautious skipper would have had the main topgallant sail off her, hut she was running well away from the following seas. A young Swede, named Peterson, fell overboard from aloft. The general verdict was that there was no hope for him. Then it was noticed that ho had become entangled with the new logline, which had been used for the first time that day. Three sailors tackled the loglinc at the rail to take the strain off the “ clock,” and they hauled in, and paid out as the ship slowed and raced on tho heave of tho towering seas. A bowline was cast in the end of the cro’jack brace, and streamed astern. Desperately, but unsuccessfully, Peterson tried to grab hold of it. Then, ceasing his efforts through sheer exhaustion, he continued to lie towed by the logline. The main topgallant sail l ivas lowered on to lifts, also the mizzen upper topsail, but it w r as risky lest she “ pooped.” Her speed was thus eased, and Peterson was gradually brought under the counter. A sailor was lowered overboard, and passed a line round Peterson. Both were hauled on deck. After a brief but rough-and-ready first aid course, Peterson, still unconscious, was carried forward to the forecastle, where he parted with more salt water before being lifted into his bunk. On his regaining consciousness a rum ration was administered. Not the following morning, but the one after, that he was able to sit up in his bunk and sip a pannikin of hot coffee. Before he had finished it the mate bounced into the forecastle. “You all right now?” queried the mate. “Yes, sir,” replied Peterson, although it took him all his time to sit up in the bunk. “ Then, what the h are you loafing in that bunk for,” roared the mate. “ Turn out with your watch. On the stroke of the bell I’ll be waiting for you.-”

WHACK OF PARABLES. “ That’s your whack of parables for the night,” announced the Old Timer. “ Wc shall clew up with a text from one of the old-time psalms of the sea. Not about sounding the loud timbrel over Egypt’s dark sea. No, nor the sounding of Cape Horn’s loud peal on Christmas Eve, from the bells of the Champion of the Seas, Malboro, Dunedin, Bluejacket, and many other fine ships that never returned.” The Old Timer halted to put a match to his pipe. Resuming, lie gave out his text as he called it, from memory: “We lose sight of land like bold hearts of thunder—and now we’re at sea we’ll rant and we’ll roar.”

The Old Timer proceeded to enlarge on his text. Ho was in a reminiscent mood rather than a ranting, roaring humour. “ God’s pity,” he said, for the wee, shrivelled soul that could not shed its shackles, if only for one evening, in order that it might glimpse the magnificent background of British shipping. It was like a picture with a. perspective reaching back through the centuries. Individually it had been hard work always, but never a whine, while growling freely and taking the hard bits as a .matter of course. Only the other day the Old Timer had seen a 17,000-ton motor liner swing proudly to a berth at the George street pier. It was a sight worth seeing. And as she swung she covered the ground where Maori war canoes, and old-time whalers, and saucy wool clippers had, each in turn, prepared the way for that great liner, and laid the background of her greatness. To reach this new world port of historical interest and future greatness, the stately liner had, iii a manner of speaking, steered a course right down the picture ho had mentioned. She had swung down the English Channel, with its crowding memories of her ancestors. And crossed the Spanish Main, she had, where Henry Morgan, old artist of the sea, had laid his colours with a lurid brush. Then Golden Panama! Once a name to stir the blood of grim adventurers. Now but a canal, a right of way, to give access to the sunny Pacific, where. Britons toil and growl and show their oldtime grit afresh, as they build anew the world’s greatness. “ Steady, Old Timer,” interrupted Little Joe. “ Where do you reckon you’re steering for? ” “Steering for my bunk,” replied the Old Timer, as he turned back its bush-rug counterpane and primed his pipe for the nightcap whiff. “We’ll call it an evening, boys. I have to be out early in the morning for a haul on the middle bank, and it’s _ slack water half an hour before daylight.” That was his explanation of the abrupt closing down of the discussion. “ Close the door as you go out, ’ he asked the departing guests, “ and—what is that?” (a feline love call led off a midnight chorus out of doors) “ and murder those crimson cats. DOWN BELOW. “ When 1 come to dio and look hack on the lifetime just closing, I shall see it, as a great room, bare of all luxuries, but hung round with an enchanting array of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and rusty-streaked tramp steamers, with an immense liner as tail piece to the life’s review. Also summer seas, where flying fish skim the sparkling wave; the Banks of Newfoundland where fishermen man their dories in the misty summer days and huge waves roll in the fall of the vear: the fretful Tasman Sea, with its left-hand gales; bitter, cruel, pitiless

Cape Horn; and other ocean milestones and highways; withal the spicy fragranee and the warm moonlight or the tropic nights. And all the heroes pictured in that hall of memory will be seamen, and all the songs sung there will bo the songs of the sea. Rum will be a drink there, and a tankard of ale, and beer in a mug; aye, and the daily whack of limejuice served you from a bucket. And all the scents of the sea will he there—paint and pitch, new ropes and harness casks, and the whin of the boiled salt horse as it comes in from the galley. And I pray God it may be that sort of world—the after world—where a sailor’s oath may not come too much amiss. But for all that, may it bo a land of sunshine and not, as the saying goes, ‘as black as the Earl of Hell’s riding boots.’ And once a wain may it he a place where no old salt shall pass you without speaking, be it but to wish you the ‘ sou’-west corner ’—the worst corner in all the nether world: for in that corner the nor'-cast trades blow all the ashes and cinders of hell in your face.”