DOUBLE’S INTELLIGENCE

Otago Witness, Issue 3889, 25 September 1928, Page 76

DOUBLE’S INTELLIGENCE

By

Henry Ette.

(Special for the Otago Witness.) Have you ever been up against what the initiated call an “ intelligence,” because I have, and I consider it the greatest and most remarkable adventure of my life? (said the jolly, good-natured restaurateur to me one lonely Christmas Eve, after he had invited me to be his and his aimiable, pretty wife’s only guest.) I am 50 years old, and have been a sailor. If I had been born 20 years later, and come to live in the time of prohibition, and in my youth girls had not been in existence, I should probably have been captain of a big liner, or in any case skipper of a floating refinery. This painful period of my life I will quietly pass over. When I tell you, however, that I have learnt from experience, that after a six months’ cruise I have had just as much or just as little in my pocket of my £5 or £lO discharge the morning after going ashore, there remains nothing more to be said.

I have stayed at the most luxurious hotels in the world and the most wretched seamen’s homes—where you are ordered before turning in, “ Shirts off ” —and the comparatively select, religious kind—“ hall, dining room, with ale for dinner ”; also, for that matter, a high prison with an iron latticework of steps and passages on innumerable floors, with small dark cells without windows, where one tries in vain to snatch a few hours’ restless sleep whilst one’s neighbour (in the D.T’s.) hammers on the locked iron door, which is spiked on the outside. I have been all over the world, in liners, full-rigged ships, barques, cutters, schooners, and trawlers; on the American multi-millionaire’s yachts; as Scandinavian sailor I received the highest wages any sailor is able to obtain. I have been through half Central Africa, and nearly got stuck fast in the swamps, but I could always make the crocodiles satisfied with my topboots. For 20 years I was with the big Norwegian sealers and whalers and the floating stations. There is no “ fish ” to be found in the sea —the sea serpent included—with which I am not acquainted. I can tell you in an instant what it is you see far away at sea disporting itself—a Greenland whale, a blue whale, a herring whale, a finner, a cachalot, or just a herd of grampus, the giant wolves of the sea, the gladiators.

I have been slave overseer on a Durban whale station, and wintered at 80deg N. I have made an encl of 60 bears. Both in Greenland and in the Red Sea by Socotra I have, by a miracle, escaped from sharp-pointed fangs. Of children’s illnesses I have had malaria, scurvy, elephantitis, dysentery several Jtimes. Some knife’thrusts have naturally fallen to my share here and there. I am a bit of a poet, and possess a fine little lyrical vein in spite of editors. Theatre managers have also discouraged me, for they never will produce any of my pieces. I am also a dramatic author, and am never in any big town without paying a visit to fhe biggest theatre and making an offer, of three or four of my plays. I am always received by a dragon in gold lace who haughtily gives me to understand that I must first write to the manager, who will then grant me an appointment; but an appointment, as yet, I have never obtained. My poems and dramas I always carry in a handbag which never leaves me.

Editors and theatre managers, however, only laugh at my productions. “ The distinguishing flag of genius is the idiot’s silly grin! ” as my late friend Jack London always said to me. “ No one becomes a great author without having to pay for it, and the genius waters his poems with his tears. Talent has its children’s illnesses to go through. He who will raise himself above the common herd must be prepared for battle, and not stand aside for difficulties. A great author is a martyr who does not die. All this was written by Balzac a 100 years ago.” I “ jumped ” with him once from Milwaukee to Philadelphia, where he showed me the greatest revelation of beauty in the way of a bar that I have ever seen. I believe there were eight buffets, and altogether 100 barkeepers. On the outskirts of Philadelphia I made the acquaintance of a German journeyman. Never before nor since have I met. an American vagabond who was in the possession of such travelling technique as Jie was. Not even Henry Morton Stanley, nor Livingstone, nor Nansen, nor Amundsen have ever possessed the skill with which he (with a stick) could take a chicken off its feet at a distance of 60 yards or so.' His boomerang never failed. The chicken and- the stick always lay side by side, and as he travelled with equipment, saucepan, and frying pan, We lived like gods. Potatoes, onions, and tomatoes improved the taste of the chicken broth. For breakfast, always fried eggs. We had to part, though, worse luck. While he continued his wanderings north-westward I jumped with the freight to the east. Thrown off, I got a job from a solitary fanner of keeping the starlings off his cherry trees. Furnished with two enoromus pot lids I walked up and down whistling the "Stars and Stripes,” the

then popular melody, and using the pot lids as a gong. The starlings fled in consternation while the air resounded, so that the cherries fell down on my head. With one dollar in my pocket I reached New York. With my dollar broken up into 5c pieces, I found, near the docks, a bar, where every evening at 6 o’clock a joint was carved. Ah, yes! at that time there still existed a free lunch for a vagabond! One slice on a piece of dry bread, with a glass of beer, was all the food I got each day. I, who have dined •in the West End of London for pounds, but also, to tell the truth, have often been desperately hungry. My rich aunt was dying in Chicago. Many times a day I was at the Western Telegraph Office, 273 Street, N.E. Corner, to inquire about money for my journey. “ Cannot die as long as you remain,” was all the journey money I ever got. Being able to speak four languages I got a job as deck steward on the s.s. St. Louis, an American liner, and therefore I am able to write these lines, because a stowaway was found smothered in the bunkers,-and the bodies of two others were found in the ventilators after the St. Louis had been fumigated for rats. Neither of them ever “ jumped ” again. From Liverpool I sailed with a fullrigger to Chile, and for 25 years I never stood still on the earth—l let it roll incessantly under me. Nerves and shock I know nothing at all about. A mine, at . least, would have to explode in my immediate neighbourhood before I would so much as drop a glass I might be holding in my hand at the time, and even then, of course, only if it were empty! I was torpedoed four times during the war.

I hope you have seen from this that I don’t go down in the first round, and that 1 am a fine harmonious mixture of gentleman, sailor, poet, vagabond, dramatic author, pirate, and perhaps other things. The “intelligence” of Double? Well, I really didn’t meet him out in the wide world—but in my comparatively quiet and tranquil birthplace, Copenhagen. After having boen discharged in Bennos Aires from the southern fields (a “ field ’’ or “ sealing field ” is a special whaling expression), and having arrived in Copenhagen, via Bergen-Gothenburg, : I found a boarding house out in the quiet suburb of Frederiksberg, where I could rest until the next voyage. Every evening I was lying peacefully in my bed by 9 o’clock. My bed stood so that my face was away from the window, my left leg being always on the outside. were moonlit, and I had no curtains. Now, of course, you. are expecting a good oldfashioned ghost story with a white face at the window pane, etc. Oh, no! A modern intelligence behaves in quite another manner. In our advancing civilisation he or she doesn’t perform in the churchyard at midnight any more robed in a long shroud while the organ in the church plays soft music. What did the intelligence do, then ? He merely threw me out of bed. Yes, it sounds strange, but nothing else really did happen.

As Iliave explained to you, my left leg was on the outside, and suddenly a strong hand took hold of it, round the thinnest part of the shin, and a moment after I was standing on the floor, wide awake, bare-legged, in my nightshirt, by the side of my bed. Yes, that’s all that happened. But, all the same, it was enough for once to make me terrorstricken. - At that time there was no electric light, and the moonlight wasn’t sufficient. I groped for the matches and lit a candle. While doing so I discovered that my hands were trembling. Alcoholism, you say! But for a whole year I hadn’t’ as a matter of fact, tasted anything stronger than tea or coffee. When 1 caught sight of my face in the mirror before me I saw that it was ashy white. I had never seen myself like that before! Then a sudden awful terror came over me.

Away, away at any cost! I. tore open the door on to the landing, and, sftatching up my clothes and braces, which always lay together on a chair, P rushed out’into the hall. There I dressed myself, got hold of an overcoat and soft hat (I discovered afterwards it wasn’t mine at all), got the hall door open, shut it after me, reached the gate in one bound, and stood on the street. Then I remembered that I had left the candle burning, and that I had forgotten my handbag with my poems and dramas —for the first time—entirely forgotten

What four torpedoings couldn’t co, the intelligence had done! I began wandering aimlessly up and down the tree-lined avenues. It poured with rain, but in my excited condition I didn t notice it at all. I just walked, walked, and walked!

Where I had been -I was never afterwards quite sure* of, to such an extent was mv brain working while I walked. It worked incessantly, trying to find out what this thing really was—what had happened to me. About daybreak, when it had begun to get light, I found myself right at the other end of the town, and, as at the same time people began to show themselves, I became quieter. I jumped on one of the omnibuses that went my way, and reached home. There I sat down in a comfortable armchair and stared unceasingly at my bed for two hours. If I had received a letter telling me that all I possessed was lost in a speculation, or that an old aunt had died and left me a million in her will, quite unexpectedly, my brain could not have been more muddled or confused than it now was.

My landlady disturbed my meditation with my morning coffee. She asked me why “ had rushed out of the house in the middle of the night so suddenly, because both she and the others had been awakened by my night racket. I pretended sleeplessness and nervousness, payed what 1 owed, took my luggage, and went straight to the nearest hotel. Not for a thousand dollars would I .have slept one more night in that room. But I had to find out what this strange and- incomprehensible thing was that had happened to me. I, who had listened to the white polar wolf's eerie howling in the Great Silence, and the roaring of the lions over the burnt prairies near the Upper Tana, without changing colour —I had gone as white as a sheet. That was a fact I couldn’t get away from. At a library I got bold of some copies of a Spiritualist paper, “ The Seeker After Truth,” and, alter studying for some hours remarkable phenomena from Nostradamus and Conan Doyle’s, elves, went away a deal wiser than when I had come.

I had been up against an “ intelligence.” the spirit of a departed. Someone from the other world had tried tc get in touch with me. But who? My parents died when I was little. Could it be one of them, my father or my mother, who wished to divert a danger from me ?

I waited, almost expecting to hear that the boarding house had collapsed through an earthquake. But it remained standing, and as my money was gone, I went off again on a long voyage. But I could not forget it, and for years the terror remained in my system, so that I never dared sleep in a bed without tucking my leg —the left or right, whichever was on the outside—well under the clothes, and if I wakened through the night and found one of my legs at the edge of tin bed, I pulled it in at once with a jerk The red-hot point of a needle couldn’t have had a greater effect. But if I were at sea and sleeping in my bunk, I never thought about it. lor three years I was sailing from the North to the South Pole. One fine autumn day I was again in Copenhagen One evening as I was taking a shortcut I suddenly found myself outside the mysterious building, and so great was mv inexplicable terror that I rushed full speed down the avenue, without stopping before I reached the end. A pack of howling wolves at my back couldn’t have made me run faster. Much out of breath, and not a little ashamed of myself, I stopped a minute and wiped my perspiring brow. A policeman with his hands behind his back, a postman, a pretty young housemaid, and a street-sweeper were all that I saw. They stared, surprised and questioningly, at me, as if they were thinking, “ What in all the world is the matter with him?’. But as no one shouted either Fire ’ or “Stop thief!” they remained passive. Then I sauntered crestfallen down the next avenue and on towards the town.

As my nerves were a little upset—l who never before knew what nerves were I went into the nearest restaurant and sank down at the table by the door. If was in the old palmy days when one could get whisky at every cafe and restaurant, and I ordered a golden drink. The restaurant consisted of one single big long room, with the musicians’ platform to the right and the buffet in the background. But it was far too early, and I was the only customer. The land-* lord had, apparently, taken a lot of trouble to give the room an exotic Eastern appearance. There were Japanese pictures with charming little geishas on the walls and on the ceilings, and a number of coloured paper lanterns’ hanging from the ceiling. I lit a cigarette and allowed the glorious ‘ gohlen drmk to glide down my throat. And then,, whilst the thin smoke wrapped me m a blue haze, a row of living pictures glided past my inward eye. Nowadays I would have called it a film, but then nobody knew what a film was

i- 1 , lnside of an elegant, bril-hantly-hghted restaurant, and vouim people in evening dress. There was chattering, flirting, music—an orchestra of a dozen or so playing on a platform—and dancing round about and between the tables. Waiters in white uniforms with brass buttons made their way between. Corks flew. The orchestra had evidently just started the latest popular tune, when the swing-door in the background opened, and in walked the figure of a strongly-built, tall, slender sailor. His brand new blue suit and the strongly-tanned lower part of his face, which contrasted greatly with the whiteness of his forehead, showed that he was just returned from a Ion" voyage. / °

He had, apparently, money in his pockets also, and was in a certain bold condition, or he would otherwise never have ventured into that comparatively select restaurant, which he surely was not in the habit of frequenting. ’ With an imperious “Hi-hello!” and a little more polite “ Oh, please, waiter,” he sat down at one of the few vacant tables. A waiter approached, glanced quickly at the strange kind of customer, and went off with an order. The sailor took out a flat cigarette box of tin, evidently from Mospero freres in Cairo, opened it with the little metal knife attached' to it, and lighted up. The waiter brought whisky and water. The first drink was tossed off at one go. “ It is surely a long time since vou tasted whisky, my boy,” I said-to myself, but the next he was a little longer over. A third? A fourth! Then he went over to the orchestra, felt in his pockets, and, to the surprise of the customers, waiters, and musicians, threw a sovereign on to the platform.

“Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag. Smile! Smile! Smile,” he demanded, and then he must have another whisky. Now the waiter demanded payment for the previous four or five drinks. He was evidently a little anxious as to whether this queer kind of customer was able to pay or not. The sailor rummaged in his pockets. He fumbled, sought, and rummaged, but nothing of importance came to light. A few coppers and sixpences, but no notes. ‘Oh! you stupid boy,” I said to myself. “ You’re just like a silly apprentice the first time on leave, throwing away your last gold -coin. You are cleared out, my friend. That means three months! ” The waiter began to look more and more doubtful, and I really enjoyed the situation. “A good thing it isn’t you,” thought I to myself. At last the sailor found a strange note, but the waiter shook his head. More fishing in his pockets. Parleying! Wrangling! “ You can’t come into this restaurant and order drinks without being able to pay for them.” The sailor now grew seriously angry.

“Shut up! ” A kick at the table, it rattled, the sound of broken glasses and bottles. Three, four waiters rushed up. The customers at the tables nearest jumped up in alarm. The sailor suddenly planted his fist right in the eyes of one of the waiters, so that he fell over against another table. Smash! Crash! Cries from the women, and shouts—- “ Turn him out! Police! Out with him! Where is the proprietor? Whv doesn’t he send for the police?” From the background a clean-shaven stout gentleman, in a black frockcoat, was pushing his way forward. But swinging a chair in his right hand, the sailor had already reached the swingdoors. In that instant, as he stood with his back towards them, opening them with his left hand behind his back, he flung the chair contemptuously into the room in the direction of the’ orchestra that had taken his last sovereign. I caught a first really distinct look'at his face. It was myself! He was already out through the. doors. Vanished! But myself it was! Certain sure! . . . End of the film!

I looked about me wonderingly, and went over to the middle of the room. I was more and more surprised, and memory coming back to me, I looked about me. Yes, right enough! Here, once, after having been discharged, and under the influence of a two or three days’ spree. I had made an awful scandal, and now that my brain, after three or four whiskeys, was in the same vibrations as then, the remembrance rose up before me, surely, and with painful certainty. “Are you looking for anything, sir?” It was the waiter, who, much surprised at my curious behaviour—suddenly standing up in the room and glancing about in all directions—came up to me for an explanation, and at the bar I saw a young lady staring at me with a frightened expression on her face. I drew my hand across my forehead. “Yes, I am looking for something! Could I speak to the proprietor? ” “To the mistress? Mi- Double’s widow, do you mean ? ” “ Widaw! ” I gasped. “ Isn’t Mr Double living? ” “No, didn’t you know that, sir? Mr Double died a couple of years ago.” I could feel my knees shaking under me. “ Where did he die? ” “At his home in Long avenue! ” “ Good God! Then it was Double! ” “ My- legs gave way under me, and I collapsed into the nearest high-backed red plush sofa. The waiter came rushing up. - “ Are you goint to faint? Are you ill ? Would you like some salvolatile? ” “No, I’m not ill enough for that! I’m just very hard up for a whisky. A double one please, an extra double one! ” The waiter brought it me, and a few minutes afterwards I was all right again. “ If your mistress can be here in a quarter of an hour, I’ll be back here to settle up an old debt with her I had forgotten about! Get me a taxi, please.” A good quarter of an hour after I was back again with £5. The waiter introduced me to Mrs Double, a dark, tall, ladylike, thin woman in the thirties. “ Madame,” said I bowing, “ for several years I have been owing your husband £5. I am pleased to be able to settle the little debt with you now. Will you kindly tell me where your husband is buried?” . Somewhat surprised Mrs Double gave me instructions how to find the grave in the churchyard. I took the taxi there at once, and at the entrance bought a magnificent wreath for £l. With the grave digger’s help I found the grave. “ Deal- friend Double,” I said, “ what the priest said about you at the funeral I don’t know, and I don’t care either. You have given me a hard but wellearned lesson. Even a seafaring man can try to become and to behave like a gentleman—that indefinable idea—created in the mother’s womb, developed in the backbone, and not to be bought for millions. But then, first and foremost, he must not create scandals in restaurants while intoxicated, and he must pay his debts. I hope we shall meet in the next life, and that we, at some future time, may accompany each other back to the earth—as it was’in the ’eighties and ’nineties of the last century—push! push! way in! way out! Good-bye, Mr Double! ” A fortnight later I sailed for Sandefjord on board the Roald Amundsen,'

which later was destroy'ed by file on the Hudson River, and never since has Double's intelligence crossed my' billowyway. Peace be with him! But as you see, I returned here, and for once did not throw my- hard-earned money away in the town, as all whalers usually do. I remembered a beautiful young widow in mourning. She whom you see here. Now she is a widow no longer.