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Part 1

GIFTS OF FORTUNE

_Other Books by the Same Author_

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE OLD JUNK LONDON RIVER WAITING FOR DAYLIGHT TIDEMARKS

[Illustration:

_The tall ship--standing out into windy space_-- ]

GIFTS OF FORTUNE

AND HINTS FOR THOSE ABOUT TO TRAVEL

H. M. TOMLINSON

_With Woodcuts by_ HARRY CIMINO

[Illustration]

“_Giftës of fortune, That passen as a shadow on the wall._”

CHAUCER, The Merchant’s Tale.

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON MCMXXVI

GIFTS OF FORTUNE

_First Edition_

H-A

_To The Caliph and his Lady for placing the unripened pages of this book in the sun of the Côte d’Or at their Chateau de Missery_

CONTENTS

SOME HINTS FOR THOSE ABOUT TO TRAVEL 1

OUT OF TOUCH 100

ELYSIUM 110

THE RAJAH 116

THE STORM PETREL 123

ON THE CHESIL BANK 131

THE PLACE WE KNOW BEST 186

DROUGHT 194

A RIDE ON A COMET 200

REGENT’S PARK 206

A DEVON ESTUARY 212

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE TALL SHIP--STANDING OUT INTO WINDY SPACE _Frontispiece_

_Facing Page_ TO SEE THE GLOW OF SUNRISE ABOVE THE PALISADE OF THE JUNGLE 8

I MET A CHEERFUL GOATHERD 56

AFTER A LONG AND FAITHFUL ADHERENCE TO THE BEATEN TRACKS YOU REACH SOME DISTANT COASTAL OUTPOST 74

SOME NAME IT EDEN OR ELYSIUM 84

THE BUFFALOES STARED AT US AS WE WENT ALONG, AS MOTIONLESS AS FIGURES IN METAL 120

AS TO THE SEA, IT HAS NO HUMAN ATTRIBUTES WHATEVER 158

AT LOW TIDE THESE STONE STAIRS GO DOWN TO A SHINGLE BEACH 226

GIFTS OF FORTUNE

I. SOME HINTS FOR THOSE ABOUT TO TRAVEL

A year or two ago a lively book was published called _The Happy Traveller_. It is not an indispensable work if you have booked your passage, or are on a ship’s articles, for only Providence can help you then, yet it is a cheerful guide if you would know what long journeys are like, in parts, without making them. Its author, the Rev. Frank Tatchell, proves he has seen enough of the world to satisfy a crew of able seamen. He has seen it from the byroads, the highroads, the decks of local trading ships, and the windows of third-class railway carriages. He has seen it because, apparently, he wanted to; and he has enjoyed it all, or most of it. He has some heroic advice for those whom he judges may be infected by his own enthusiasm, and indeed his book would induce many young men to pull on their boots forthwith: “Be cheerful and interested in everything,” he tells us; and, “Do not bother too much about your inside.”

But what I sought in his volume was not the Malay for Thank you--which he gave me--but what set him going. Why did he do it? There is a word, frequently seen in glossy narrative, “Wanderlust.” The very lemmings must know it. It excuses almost anything in the way of travel lunacy, even to herding with Russian emigrants for fun. It is used as a flourish by those who hope we will fail to notice that they are uncertain what to do with themselves. Mr. Tatchell, however, does not use it once. Yet you see him hustling through the bazaar at Bhamo, where you do not meet many tourists; and he discovers that the half-castes of the Society Isles are especially charming, though he does not pretend that it is worth while voyaging to the South Seas to confirm that; or he peeps into the Malayan forest long enough to note “myriads of leeches in all directions humping and hastening towards the traveller.” He certainly saw those leeches. He saw them _hump_. But why did he foregather with them, and go to smell Bhamo? For out of so varied an experience he returns but to assure romantic youth sitting on the bollards of our quays and gazing seaward wistfully, “Elephants dislike having white men approach them from behind.” Or of this: “If you should become infested with fleas, sleep out on a bed of bracken one night, and in the morning you will be free from the pests.” Such fruits of travel seem hardly enough. Mr. Tatchell himself was decidedly a happy traveller, and the cause of happiness in others--his book can be commended in confidence--for he admits that his method of enjoying himself in a strange bed is to sing aloud the aria, “Why do the Nations?” But he does not tell us what sent him roving, nor does he produce any collection of treasures, except oddities such as the warning to white men about approaching the behinds of elephants, and Vinakka vinnakka! (Fijian for Bravo.)

Perhaps those little curiosities are enough. We are pleased to hear of them. What else was there to get? It would be very hard for most voyagers to explain convincingly why they became restless, and went to sea. Some do it to get away from us, some to get away from themselves, and some because they cannot help it. I shall not forget the silliness which gave me my first sight of Africa. The office telephone rang. “Oh, is that you? Well, we want you to go to Algeria at once.” I went downstairs hurriedly to disperse this absurdity. But it was no good. I had to go. And because I was argumentative about it they added Tripoli and Sicily, which served me right. After all, while in Africa, one is necessarily absent from Fleet Street. I should have remembered that.

Mr. Tatchell tells us that even a poor man, if he does not leave it till he is in bondage to the income-tax collector or the Poor Law officials, may see all the world. I suppose he may. With sufficient health, enterprise, and impudence, a young fellow could inveigle himself overseas without paying a lot of money to the P. & O. Company; though it wants some doing nowadays, under the present rules of the Mercantile Marine Board and the seafarers’ unions. Shipowners do not lightly engage to pay compensation for accidents to inexperienced hands whose sole recommendation is that they want to see the world so wide. As for getting a berth for the voyage cheaply, it would be foolish to suppose that agents for passenger ships are willing to forgive the fact that you are poor, and will shake Cornucopia about freely. Why should they? You have to pay across the counter in exchange for a ticket, and at the post-war rates. If anyone doubts that this is a hard world, let him cut the painter at Port Said, with a shilling in his pocket, and note what will happen. In some difficult regions you must travel on foot with the natives, and live with them; and that costs very little, even in a land otherwise expensive, but those unsophisticated coasts must first be reached. That simple way of a nomad is all very well in the wilderness, but I think any reasonable man, however thirsty he may be for a draught of primitive Life, would hesitate before sequestering himself in native cities like Calcutta and Singapore, counting cannily the lesser coins, and traveling about in third-class carriages. I noticed that even Mr. Tatchell shrank from the prospect of getting from island to island of Indonesia with the deck passengers. I am not surprised. One is easily satisfied with an occasional hour on the lower deck, in converse with a picturesque native elder. But to eat and sleep there for weeks, among the crowing cocks, the banana skins, the babies, the dried fish, and men and women spitting red stuff after chewing betel nut! It has been done, I believe, but the shipping companies and all their officers set their faces against it. They do not encourage Europeans to travel even second class in those seas, though there is hardly any difference between the cabins of the two classes. Of course, if one were anything of an Orientalist, it would be ridiculous to keep to the first saloon with the Europeans when there were Arab and Chinese merchants in an inferior saloon of the ship.

I do not know how one plans a long voyage, and maintains the excellent plan scientifically through all its difficulties. I have never done any planning. A ship seems to have drifted my way at last by chance, and then, if I did not hesitate too long about it, I went in her, though always for a reason very inadequate. One bitter and northerly Easter I read, because gardening was impossible, Bates’ “Naturalist on the River Amazons.” The famous illustration of that spectacled entomologist in trousers and a check shirt, standing with an insect net in a tropical forest surrounded by infuriated toucans, fixed me when casually I pulled the volume off a library shelf. The book had not been specially commended to me, but its effect was instant. And the picture that artful naturalist drew of the pleasures of Santa Belem de Para, when contrasted with the sleet of an English spring, made me pensive over a fire. I had never seen the tropics. And what a name it is, the Amazons! And what a delightful book is Bates’!

Yet when I enquired into this enticement, Para might as well have been in another star. One may go cheaply to Canada, and risk it. That trick cannot be played on the tropics with impunity. I had the propriety to guess that. Then, one night, a sailor came home from sea, and just before he left he spoke of his next voyage. They were going to Para, and up the Amazon; and up a tributary of that river never before navigated by an ocean-going steamer. “Nonsense,” I said, “it cannot be done--not if you draw, as you say you do, nearly twenty-four feet. And it means rising about six hundred feet above sea level.”

“You can talk,” the sailor replied, “but I’ve seen the charter. We’re going, and I wish we weren’t. Sure to be fevers. Besides, a ship has no right inside a continent.”

I began thinking of Bates. My friend turned up the collar of his coat before going into the rain. “Look here,” he said, “if you have any doubt about it, you may take the trip. There’s a cabin we don’t use.”

I never gave that preposterous suggestion a second thought, but I did write, for a lively morning newspaper, my sailor’s mocking summary of what that strange voyage might have in store. The editor, a day later, met me on the office stairs. “That was an amusing lie of yours this morning,” he said. I answered him that it was written solely in the cause of science and navigation. What was more, I assured him earnestly, I had been offered a berth on the ship for the proof of doubters. “Well,” said the editor, “you shall go and prove it.” He meant that. I could see by the challenging look in his eye that nothing much was left about which to argue. He prided himself on his swift and unreasonable decisions.

Somehow, as that editor descended the stairs, showing me the finality of his back, the attractive old naturalist of the Amazon with his palms at Para, toucans, spectacles, butterflies, and everlasting afternoon of tranquillity in the forest of the tropics, was the less alluring. This meant packing up; and for what? Even the master of the steamer could not tell me that.

It is better to obey the mysterious index, without any fuss, when it points a new road, however strange that road may be. There is probably as much reason for it, if the truth were known, as for anything else. It would be absurd, in the manner of Browning and Mr. Tatchell, to greet the unseen with a cheer, and thus flatter it, yet when circumstances begin to look as though they intend something different for us, perhaps the proper thing to do is to get into accord with them, to see what will happen.

There was no doubt about that voyage, either. I take this opportunity to thank an autocratic editor for his cruel decision one morning on the office stairs, a trivial episode he has completely forgotten. It is worth the break, and the discomfort of a winter dock, and the drive out in the face of hard westerly weather, to come up a ship’s companion one morning, and to see for the first time the glow of sunrise above the palisade of the jungle. You never forget the warm smell of it, and its light; though that simple wonder might not be thought worth a hard fight with gales in the western ocean. Yet later, when by every reasonable estimate of a visitor accustomed to the assumption of man’s control of nature the forest should have ended, yet continues as though it were eternal--savage, flamboyant, yet silent and desolate--the voyager begins to feel vaguely uneasy. He cannot meet that lofty and sombre regard with the cheerful curiosity of the early part of the voyage. He feels lost. St. Paul’s cathedral does not seem so influential as once it did, nor man so important. And perhaps it is not an unhealthful surmise either that man may be only a slightly disturbing episode on earth after all, and had better look out; a hindering and humbling notion of that sort would have done him no harm, if of late years it had given him pause.

[Illustration:

_To see the glow of sunrise above the palisade of the jungle._ ]

Well, something of that sort is about as much as one should expect to get out of the experience, that and the ability to call for a porter in Fijian or Chinese. But is it not sufficient? It is hardly as tangible as hearing earlier than the people at home of the wealth of oil at Balik-papan, or what comes of getting in at the Rand on the ground floor. Even as book material it is not so sparkling as Lady Hester Stanhope, or as exciting as sword-fish angling off the Bermudas. Nor does it provide any inspiration, once you are home again, to get to work to plant the British flag where it will do the lucky ones most good. There seems hardly anything in it, and yet you feel that you could not have done any better, and are not sorry it turned out just so.

Besides, there were the men one met. It would not be easy to analyse the impulse which sent one travelling, an impulse strong enough, if vague, to overcome one’s natural desire to be let alone. What did one want, or expect to learn? It would be hard to say. But you are aware, in rare moments, that you have got something almost as good as a word about a new oil-field, through some chance converse with a stranger, about nothing in particular. For it might have been night in the Malacca Strait, with little to give reasonable conviction of the realities except the stars, the tremor of the ship’s rail, and the glow of a shipmate’s cigar; and the other man might not have said much. You had previously noticed he was not that kind. But his casual relation of an obscure adventure--rather as if the droning of the waters had become a significant utterance--gave an abiding content to the shadows.

What right have we to travel, when better men have to stay at home? But it would be unwise to attempt an answer to that question, for certainly it would lead, as did the uncorking of the bottle that imprisoned the Genie, to much smoke and confusion. We should not poke about with a naked light amid the props which uphold the august and many-storied edifice of society, even to make sure of our rightful place there. It was a reading of Lord Bryce’s _Memories of Travel_ that started so odd a doubt in my mind. When I had finished it I did not begin to think of packing a bag. I felt instead that I had no title to do that. Lord Bryce, that learned man, had been remembering casually Iceland and the tropics, Poland, the Mountains of Moab, and the scenery of North America. But he did not make me feel that those places should be mine. He, that great scholar, made them desirable, yet infinitely remote, and reservations for wiser men, among whom, if I were bold enough to intrude, my inconsequence would be detected instantly. After reading his book of travel I felt that it would be as wrong in me to possess and privily to treasure priceless Oriental manuscripts as to claim the right to see coral atolls in the Pacific or prospects of the Altai.

We may lack the warrant to travel, even if we have the means. Lord Bryce made it coldly clear that few of us are competent to venture abroad. He made me feel that much that would come my way would be wasted on me, for I have little in common with the encyclopædias. The wonders would loom ahead, would draw abeam, would pass astern, and I should not see them; they would not be there. The pleasures of travel, when we are candid about them, are separated by very wide deserts and tedious, where there is nothing but sand and the dreary howling of wild dogs. An Eastern city may grow stale in a night. “‘Dear City of Cecrops’ saith the poet; but shall we not say, ‘Dear City of Zeus?’” There are days when the ocean is a pond. Its relative importance then appears to be that of a newspaper of last week. Sometimes, too, you do not want to hear that there are three miles of water under you; no less. What of it? In nasty weather the end so far below you of the last two miles is of less importance than the beginning of the first.

It may also happen that when at last your ship reaches that far place whose name is as troubling as the name of the star to which you look in solitude, that--what is it you do there? You gaze overside at it from your trite anchorage, unbelievingly. The first mate comes aft, leisurely, rubbing his hands. You do not go ashore. What has become of the magic of a name? You go below with the mate, who has finished his job, for a pipe. To-morrow will do for Paradise, or the day after. One morning I reached Naples by sea, and I well remember my first sight of it. The stories I had heard of that wonderful bay! The ecstatic letters in my pocket from those who were instructing me how nothing of my luck should be missed! But it was raining. It was cold. I had been travelling for an age. There was hardly any bay, and what I could see of it was as glum as a bad mistake. There was a wet quay, some house fronts that were house-fronts, and a few cabs. I took a cab. That was better than walking to the railway station, and quicker. It is quite easy for me to describe my first sight of Naples and its bay.

But Lord Bryce was not an incompetent traveller. He could see through any amount of rain and dirt. He was competent indeed; fully, lightly, and with grace. To other tourists he may have appeared to be one of the crowd, trying hard to get some enjoyment out of a lucky deal in rubber or real estate, and not knowing how to do it. But he was not bored. He was quiet merely because he knew what he was looking at. What to us would have been opaque he could see through; yet I doubt whether he would have said anything about it, unless he had been asked. And why should we ask a fellow-traveller whether he can see through what is opaque? We never do it, because our own intelligence tells us that what is dark cannot be light. What we do not see is not there.

Yet how much we miss, when on a journey, Lord Bryce reveals. There was not often a language difficulty for him. When he looked at the wilderness of central Iceland he knew the cause of it, and could explain why tuffs and basalts make different landscapes. When he was in Hungary and Poland the problems we should have brushed aside as matters no Englishman ought to be expected to understand, became, in the light of his political and historical lore, simple and relevant. Among the islands of the South Seas, with their unsolved puzzles of an old continental land mass and of race migrations, so learned a traveller was just as much at ease. Once I remarked to an old voyager, who in some ways resembled Lord Bryce, that it was in my dreams to visit Celebes. “But,” he remarked coldly, “you are not an ethnologist.” No; and I can see now, after these _Memories of Travel_, that I have other defects as a traveller.

Yet I cannot deny that a craving for knowledge, when abroad, may sometimes come over me, with a dim resemblance to the craving for food or sleep. But if I go to my note-books in later years and discover that though I had forgotten them I had many interesting facts stored away, nevertheless it is evident the valuable information does very well where it is. It will never be missed. Its importance has faded. There are other things, however, one never entered in a notebook, and never tried to remember, for they were of no seeming importance then or now, things seen for an instant only, or smelt, or heard in the distance, which are never forgotten. They will recur from the past, often irrelevantly, even when the memory is not turned that way, as though something in us knew better what to look for in life than our trained eyes.

III

Travel, we are often told, gives light to the mind. I have wondered whether it does. Consider the sailors. They are supposed to travel widely. They see the cities of the world, and the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep. And--well, do you know any sailors? If you do, then you may have noticed that not infrequently their opinions seem hardly more valuable than yours and mine. Yet it must be said for them that they rarely claim an additional value for their opinions because they have anchored off Colombo. They know better than that. They know, very likely, that all the cities of the world can no more give us what was withheld at our birth than our unaided suburb. As much convincing folly may be heard at Penang as at Peckham. The sad truth is, one is as likely to grow wiser during a week-end at Brighton as in a “black Bilbao tramp

With her load-line over her hatch, dear lass, And a drunken Dago crew, And her nose held down on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, From Cadiz, south on the Long Trail--the trail that is always new.”

The fascination and illusion of that Out Trail! The other day, a man, a wise and experienced traveller, who knows deep water better than most of us, who has hunted whales, and even enjoyed being out of soundings in literature, overheard a voice near us on a dock-head exclaim in delight at the sight of a ship outward bound: “I wish I were aboard her.” He said to me quietly, “I felt like that, too, but really, you know, I don’t want to be aboard. I’m a little bit afraid of the sea.”