,COPY-CAT
By LENNOX
LITTLE busy tugs nosed, pulled, guided and at last the P. and 0. boat was safely out of Tilbury, was in mid-Thames. The sunset flamed- behind the ship--a Turner sunset, the 'Fighting Temeraire,' Hugh reflected (but was that ship going into the sunset or from it ?) he couldn't remember. Anyway, Turner, idol of his adoles cence, was now declasse and should not be mentioned— except, of course, the water-colours.
But those dreary wharfs, docks, Essex marshes, sodden houses were pure Dickens, Great Expectations" and also that chase down the river in " The Sign of Four." Dickens was still good, had " come- haek;?- need not be surreptitiously enjoyed, and "Great Expectations" was one of the best and most accepted: And Conan Doyle, though old-fashioned, remained almost best detective writer. Hugh went to dinner and to tea with satisfaction ; this brief journey to Gibraltar was, so far, rich in associations.
The sea next day was empty and ugly so he turned his attention to the passengers and found interest there. A young man going to the Far East was playing poker incessantly and continually winning. (The night before Gibraltar he admitted he had already made his fare to Rangoon.) But he was obviously "White-Cargo," he- would drink too much whiskey, get mixed tip With a coloured woman, and end on a verandah-in a dirty -white suit.
The girl was more interesting, no pbkerIplayer, Serious, lonely. She was surely going to the 'Hills," a Kipling piece, or was she governess—" 'Passage to India"?
He couldn't make up his "mind:- -•.' • ' ' - And then they were in the Bay and-a roughish Sea and a little tramp steamer seen and 'then not seen; and-, of course, it was • "Just a funnel;and,a mastri Lurching throuish the spray, Thus we threshed the 'Bolivar' Out across the Bay:" The- cliffs of Portugal appeared, the starkest. coast he had ever seen (thOugh he knew the Cliffs of Moher, having been to the West of Ireland when an undergraduate at Oxford, walking the Synge country). For an hour they conveyed nothing. to him until he remembered Mrs. Browning's " Sonnet's to the Portuguese." (Was it " to " or " of " or possibly " from " ?) He couldn't remember for he had never read them. But Lisbon appeared in the far distance, and there had been an earthquake there and Fielding was buried there, and 'of course Toin-.Tozies was the first and greatest English novel. '
Then came the Bay of Cadiz, and that Vas easy and packed with memories. Strewn with the ships and sailors of Trafalgar (must remember in the smoke-room to put the accent rightly on the last Syllable and so confound the ignoramuses). And next morning would be Gibraltar; but before it, just at sunset, far out a three-master with every sail set. She was lovely. She was :
"Stately Spanish galleon coining from the IsthmuS . Dipping through the Tropics. by the palm-green shoites With a cargo of diamonds,. . . , Emeralds, amethysts, Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores."
Gibraltar loomed up, pthie Browning—" -Here and here has England helped Me." When he landed in the late afternoon an English regimental band was playing "The Belle of New York" in the little square. •Again it" was authentic Kipling, and he looked forward to going' to' Ronda next day because he remembered that lovely picture—surely it was a Leech—and "Miranda of the Balcony:" But maybe better not to admit one had read it.'
In short, Hugh hadn't an original -idea in his head:
Previous page
