Tramping on Life: An Autobiographical NarrativeKemp, Harry
General
Tramping on Life: An Autobiographical Narrative
Kemp, Harry
Kemp, Harry, 1883-1960
On the upper deck, exposed to all the weather, were housed the more
tractable sheep, who had, without objection, bleated their way aboard
docilely up the runway--behind their black ram ... that the cattle-boss
had to help on a bit, by pulling him the few first yards by his curly
horns.
* * * * *
As we swam by in the fading day, a pale ghost of a moon was already up.
Ghostly rows of knee-ing trees stood out like live things in the
river....
Under the night, off at sea, what with the mooing and baaing through all
the ship, it seemed like an absurd farmyard that had somehow got on the
ocean.
* * * * *
There were two quarters for the men ... a place under the forecastle
head, forward--as well as the after-quarters. Nippers and I had been
separated--he staying aft, while I took up my bunk forward.
* * * * *
But the men on the boat, the few that stick in my memory as distinct
personages:
There was the bloated, fat Scotch boy, whom we called just Fatty, a
sheepherder by calling. He had signed on for the trip, to take care of
the sheep on the upper deck;
There was a weak, pathetic cockney, who died of sun-stroke;
The ex-jockey, a bit of a man with a withered left arm--made that way
from an injury received in his last race, when his mount fell on him;
There was the West Indian Negro, a woolly, ebony wisp of a creature, a
great believer in ghosts (he who thought we stowaways were ghosts when
we hid under the bunk). The Irish cattle-boss gave him the job of
night-watchman, "to break him of his superstitious silliness";
There was the big, black Jamaica cook ... as black as if he was polished
ebony ... a fine, big, polite chap, whom everyone liked. He had a white
wife in Southampton (the sailors who had seen her said she was pretty
... that the cook was true to her ... that she came down to the boat the
minute the _South Sea King_ reached an English port, they loved each
other so deeply!) ...
Then there was the giant of an Irishman ... who, working side by side
with me in the hold, shovelling out cattle-ordure there with me,
informed me that I looked as if I had consumption ... that I would not
be able to stand the terrific heat for many days without keeling over
... but, his prediction came true of himself, not of me.
One morning, not many days out, the little West Indian watchman,
bringing down the before-daylight coffee and ships-biscuits and rousing
the men, as was his duty,--found the big fellow, with whom he used to
crack cheery jokes, apparently sound asleep. The watchman shook him by
the foot to rouse him ... found his big friend stiff and cold.
The watchman let out a scream of horror that woke us right and proper,
for _that_ day....
The next day was Sunday. It was a still, religious afternoon.
We men ranged in two rows aft. The body had been sewn up in coarse
canvas, the Union Jack draped over it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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