So we, who foregathered yesterday afternoon in the shipping office, are lashed together for another four months. A motley group, my friend. Outside I stood, note-book in hand, trying to find a spare fireman who wanted a job. A mob of touts, sharks, and pimps crowded round me, hustling each other, and then turning away from my call, “Any firemen here?” In despair I go over to the “Federation Office,” where all seamen are registered in the books of life insurance, where they pay their premiums, and await possible engineers. I consult with the grave, elderly man in the office, and he asks for firemen in the bare, cold waiting-room. One man comes up, a pale, nervous chap, clean-shaven and quiet. I take his “Continuous Discharge” book, flick it open at the last entry—trawling! The last foreign-going voyage is dated 1902, “S. Africa,” “Voyage not completed.” I hand it back. “Won’t do,” I remark shortly, and look round for others. The man looks at the grave, elderly person, who takes the book. “Give him a chance,” says the latter, in his low, official voice. “Look—S. Africa. The man’s been serving his country. Give him a chance.” “I would if he’d promise not to get enteric when we reach port,” I say. “Never ’ad it yet, sir,” says the man, and I take his book. “Benvenuto. Hurry up. She’s signing on now.” He runs across the road, and I follow.

When I reach the shipping office they are waiting for me. Behind the counter and seated beside the clerk is the Captain, writing our “advance notes.” The clerk asks if all are present; we shuffle up closer, and he begins to read the articles to which we subscribe—signing our death-warrants, we call it. No one listens to him—he himself is paring his nails, or arranging some other papers as he intones the sentences which are more familiar to him and to us than the Lord’s Prayer to a clergyman. Then, when he has finished, each one comes up for catechism—carpenter, sailors, donkeyman, fireman, all in due order. Then the officers. “Donkeyman!” calls the clerk. A huge, muscular figure with a red handkerchief round his bull throat ceases arguing with a fireman, plunges forward, and seizes the pen. He is my friend of the last voyage, the mighty Norseman.

“What is your name?”

“Johann Nicanor Gustaffsen.”

“Where were you born?”

“Stockholm.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-two.”

“Where do you live?”

“Ryder Street, Swansea.”

“Any advance?”

“Yes.”

And so on with each of us.

“Don’t forget,” says the clerk from the depths of a three-and-a-half-inch collar, “to be on the ship at nine o’clock to-morrow morning.” And we troop out to make room for another crew, meet yet another coming to be paid off at the other counter, wish we were they, and eventually reach the ship.

Strange scenes sometimes, in that shipping office, or, for that matter, in any shipping office. I shall not forget that forlorn little lad we had once engaged for mess-room steward at two pounds five a month, with his red little nose and the bullied look in his eyes. It was when he went up to sign, and answer the questions given above. What was his name? “Christmas Hedge.” All turned and stared at the snivelling urchin. Where was he born? “In a field.”

The walls, too, interest a man like me. There are notices in all the tongues of Europe on the walls—notices of sunken wrecks, of masters fined for submerging their loaded discs, of white lights in the China seas altered to green ones by the Celestial Government, of transport-medals awaiting their owners, of how to send money home from Salonika or Copenhagen or Yokohama or Singapore. Near the door, moreover, is a plain wooden money-box with no appeal for alms thereon—merely a printed slip pasted along the base of it: “There is sorrow on the sea.” And often and often I have seen grey chief officers and beardless “fourths” drop their sixpences into the box, for the sake of that sorrow on the sea.

And now it is night—our last night ashore. The Second Engineer asks me to go up town with him. The Chief has gone to see his wife home to Cardiff, and George goes on watch at eight-bells. So for the last time I don a linen collar and shore clothes, and we go up town. We meet sundry youth from the ship-yard; they are going to that iridescent music-hall into which I plunged six weeks ago when we came in. We pay our sixpences for two hours’ high-speed enjoyment, “early performance”; enjoyment being sold nowadays very much like electricity—at a high voltage but small cost per unit. Scarcely my sort, I fear, but what would you? I cannot be hypercritical on this our last night ashore. And so I strive to feel as if I were sorry to go away, as if parting were indeed that sweet sorrow I have heard it called, as if I really cared a scrap for the things they care for. True, I feel the parting from my friend, and it is no sweet sorrow either. But that is at Paddington, when the train moves, and our hands are gripped tightly—a faint foretaste of that last terror, when he or I shall pass away into the shadows and the other will be left alone for ever. It is when I ponder upon that scene that I realize what our friendship has become, that I realize how paltry every other familiar or even relative appears by comparison. Let me treasure this friendship carefully, healthfully, old friend, for, by my love of life, it is rare enough in these our modern times.

I have been wondering why this is—I think it is money, or rather business. Have you noticed how business dehumanises men? I count over in my mind dozens of men whom I know, men of age, experience, and wealth, who almost demand that I should envy them by the very way they walk the city streets. They are prosperous, they imagine. I, strolling idly through those same city streets, looking at the show, studying their faces, defied them, and said to myself, “You gentlemen are not human beings—you are business men.” Not that I would tell them this; they would not understand, though they are guilty of occasional lucid intervals. They will admit, in a superior tone, that business cuts them off from a great deal. But it is evident they intend sticking to the irrefutable logic of the bank-balance. For them there is no friendship like ours. They could not afford it, bless you. How are they to know that you won’t “do” them or borrow of them? No, no. The world, for them, is a place where they have a chance of besting you and me, of getting more money than you or I, of “prospering,” as they call it, at another’s expense.

If I say to one of these men, “I want no fortune; I have what I need now by working for it,” he looks at me as though I were stark mad. If I say, to poor Sandy Jackson, for instance, who has only one lung and is mad on “getting more business”—if I say to him, “You advise me to go in for business on my own account, Sandy. Very good. What does that mean? It means that I must become dehumanised, or fail. I must have no friends who are of no use to me. I must waste no time reading or writing or dreaming dreams. I must eat no dinners abroad which are not likely to bring in business. I must toil early and late, go on spare regimen, drink little, dress uncomfortably, live respectably—for what, Sandy? For a few hundreds or thousands of pounds. May I let up then? Oh, no, Sandy, that is the business man’s mirage, that letting up. He never lets up until he is let down—into the tomb. It would be against his principles. Well, Sandy, I see you’re at it and apparently killing yourself by it, but I wish to be excused. It isn’t good enough. I want my friends, my books, my dreams most of all. Take your business; I’ll to my dreams again.”

So, while we sit in the gaudy playhouse, I dream my dreams of the great books I want to write, the orations I want to deliver, the lessons I want to teach, and I wonder how long my time of probation will be. Strange that I should never make any allowance for the dangerous nature of my calling. This may be my last night ashore for ever. What of it? Well, it will be a nuisance to leave those books, lectures, and lessons to be written, given, and taught by somebody else; but I don’t really mind. I only want to go along steadily to the end, and when that comes shake my friend by the hand and say “Farewell.” It is plain, is it not, that I am no business man?

I am still dreaming when our noisy little crowd elbow their way out and pass up the street into a tavern. Here my friend the Second is known. He pats the fair barmaid on the cheeks, chucks the dark one under the chin, calls the landlady “old dear,” and orders drinks in extenso. I am introduced to one and all, and another girl, neither dark nor fair, emerges from an inner room for my especial regard. We are invited within, and with glass in hand and girl on knee, we toast our coming voyage. One by one the girls are kissed; the landlady jocularly asks why she is left out, and a sense of justice makes me salute her chastely. You see, old man, this is the last night ashore. We bid them “good-bye,” they wish us good luck, and we depart to our own place once more. The Second is silent. He has said good-bye to his girl—he hung back a moment as we left the tavern. And there is something burning in my brain, just behind the eyeballs. I have not said good-bye to my girl. Or rather I mean—but I cannot formulate to myself just what I do mean at the time. I only feel, as I turn in, that I ought to have told my friend all that happened when I met her, a month ago, and that, after all, nothing really matters, and the sooner I get away to sea again the better.