Evening Memories

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XLIX, Issue 41, 19 October 1922, Page 7

Evening Memories

(By William O’Brien.)

CHAPTER XlV.—(Continued.) As the days went on, however, Captain McMickan’s growl was softened, and the spirits of the layers of odds in the smoke room rose, as it was found we were still making the fastest run on record. Even in the tropic atmosphere of the saloon Ave began to discover Ave were not without friends — (afterwards Archbishop) Ireland, the ascetic and none the less genial leader of religious thought in America.; an honest Briton or two who plucked up courage . to shuffle up to us in quiet corners to avow their secret sympathy with Gladstone; a Japanese Minister of War, Viscount Tani, and the members of his mission to Europe (of whom more will be heard) whose brave broadmindedness and delightful gift of sympathy gave me my first inkling of the greatness of Japan; and in the steerage, four or five hundred Irish emigrants, the mere look of whose stalwart forms and kindling eyes inspired the haughty Tory politicians of the state rooms with an adequate fear of the Lord. By Saturday morning, the Umbria had passed Fire Island, and was within an hour’s steam of New York. One more unclouded hour, and the golden laurel for the fastest Atlantic run on record would press the brow of Captain McMickan. It was not to be. Within a cannon’s shot of victory, a fog as opaque as a world-wide blanket, as cadaverous and impenetrable to argument as death, settled down upon the far-spread harbor and brought the Umbria instantly to a dead stop, and throughout all Saturday, all Sunday, and all Monday, left McMickan and friends stewing land moanjing and hornblowing in their clammy prison. Late on Monday night, as I was stretched snugly in my state room, re-reading Felix Holt, Radical, and trusting to his admirable prosings to set me to sleep in spite of the hundred foghorns, mournful as banshees with sore throats, that were wailing ' outside, the ship’s printer put in his frightened face under the electric lamp with a cry: “Come up, Sir, come up; There’s a frightful row. upstairs about you.” “About me?” “Yes, they’ve come out from New York to take you off and there’ll be the devil to pay!” Sure enough, as I clamber to the hurricane-deck, shrouded in my faithful Ulster frieze, I find myself in the midst of a wild jumble of cheers and bootings and tossing figures, something between the rush of a boarding party in a sea-fight and the ferocity of a Paris barricade in full insurrection. Impossible to distinguish friend from foe in the mob as, they flit and shout and gesticulate. Looking over the rail near the bridge through the solid white fog, I catch a. vague vision of a small steamer struggling to come alongside, but tossed hither and thither by the great uneasy sea which seems now, like the ship’s company, to have shaken itself from its deep lethargy, and to bo heaving with excitement. “What do you Avant I can now hear Captain McMickan sing out from the bridge above my head. “We want O’Brien!” the busty shout comes back from the plunging tugboat. “Yon shan’t get him!” yell a couple of dozen furious Amices within a few yards of 'me, and “Three cheers for Lord Lansdowne!” give mo the first raucous hint how the land lies. Fast upon their yells thunders out again Captain McMickan’s Amice: “No man shall leave this ship until the Medical Officer of Health comes on board!” It is not so much what is said; it is the boisterous, furious, sea-dog determination to show* his teeththe never ——shall be — slaves of the message to the Yankee tug-boatthat throws the Lansdowne group into transports. They fairly bellow with exultation. Their bellowing.? completely drown the answer from the tugboat. “Three cheers for Captain McMickan!” cries somebody, and they are given in volleys and thunders of delight, as though the captain of the Umbria had'just planted a red-hot shot in the enemy’s bows for the honor of the Union Jack. The field is fought and won. So the ingenuous Britons, young and hoary, somewhat hastily conclude, and the pent-up spleen of their days of bilious musings in the fog finds escape at last in platoons of cheers for Lord Salisbury'in celebration of the victory; “to hell with” ray inevitable self, and, I grieve, to add, the same lake of fire and brimstone for “Gladstone, the traitor”; the victorious

finale being an arrangement of “God Save the Queen!” which might have been a street riot or a volcanic eruption set to music. I now begin to make out dimly how matters stand among the rushing, shouting, scuffling little mTib,\ and find there is an anti-cyclone developing even among"the saloon passengers. Fast upon the cheers for Salisbury comes a stentorian demand for cheers for Parnell; the strains of “God Save Ireland,” tear in violently among the diabolical harmonies of the loyal anthem; and down among the steerage passengers, who are now beginning hoarsely to stir, Ave can hear them echo and re-echo like distant thunder from the darkness. While the taunting yells of the LansdoAvnites are at their most vicious, a clear, fearless voice which I can , identify at once as that of Bishop Ireland, shouts to the exulting victors: “This is not fair; you have no right, to make a political demonstration here in a mixed assembly. You know well I should only have to call up four hundred Irishmen .from the steerage to clear this deck.” The distance, the darkness, my wretched sight make me an unreliable witness as. to who it is that answers. Charlie Ryan, of the Freeman’s Journal —of all mankind the sharpest of sight, as well as best of shorthand writers and of friendsidentifies him as a Tory Town Councillor of Cork who —poor manspent the rest of his life reciting a penitential psalm protesting to Irish public opinion; “Please, sir, it wasn’t me!” The quite brutal reply at all events, to the kindly Bishop was: “That is a threat, sir, that is a threat!” spoken in the tone of one who intended to follow up the words with a blow. “It is no threat — is an appeal for common decency,” returns the Bishop, firmly. “I stand impartial in this matter as an American citizen.” “Impartial!” retorted the same offensive voice:; “You’re a disloyal man, Sir. You refused to stand up for God Save the Queen’ the other night, Sir!” As I am at long last recognised, the dozens of swaying figures, swirling around in the darkness in a devil’s chorus of merciless triumph and a counter chorus of indignation and disgust, begin to concentrate in two groups around Kilbride and myselfour own friends much the scantier and shyer, but still of the gallant kind, a pressure from whose hand lasts for a lifetimean American citizen, angry as an eagle, one of the Japanese War Minister’s young men sidling up silently to squeeze my hand, an unknown lady stealthily whispering a sympathy more exquisite still, a bluff English squire, who had been a Gladstonian candidate, with the rosy cheeks of a cruddled Kentish pippin and the typical yellow British whiskers of the French caricatures, who stands silently apart between both camps and utters not a syllable, but has that about him which makes me suspect that if it comes to blows, his blows (and they ought to be pretty sturdy ones) will not be on the side of the big battalions. (To be continued.) ! ''