The Voice in the Fog | Page 8

King's Highway had become No Thoroughfare.
America. He would go to the land of the brave (when occasion
demanded) and the free (if you were imaginative). Having packed his
trunk and valise, he departed for Liverpool. Besides, America was all
that was left; he was at the end of his rope.
What a rollicking old fraud life was! Swung out of his peaceful orbit,
by the legerdemain of death; no longer a humble steady star but a
meteor; bumping as yet darkly against the planets; and then this
monumental folly which had returned him to the old orbit but still in
meteoric form, without peace or means of livelihood! An ass, indeed, if
ever there was one.
He eventually arrived at his destination, lied blithely to the chief
steward, and was assigned to the first-class cabins on the promenade
deck, simply because his manner was engaging and his face pleasing to
the eye. The sea? He had never been on it but once, and then only in a

rowboat. A good sailor? Perhaps. Chicken and barley broths at eleven;
the captain's table in the dining-saloon, breakfast, luncheon and dinner;
cabin housekeeper and luggage man at the ports; and always a natty,
stiffly starched jacket with a metal number; and "Yes, sir!" and "No,
sir!" and "Thank you, sir!" his official vocabulary. Fine job for a poet!
It was all in the game he was going to play with fate. A chap who could
sell flamingo ties to gentlemen with purple moses, and shirts with
attached cuffs to coal-porters ought not to worry over such a simple
employment as cabin-steward on board an ocean liner.
Early the next morning they left port, with only a few first-class
passengers. The heavy travel was coming from the west, not going that
way. The series of cabins under his stewardship were vacant. Therefore,
with the thoroughness of his breed, he set about to learn "ship"; and by
the time the first bugle for dinner blew, he knew port from starboard,
boat-deck from main, and many other things, some unknown to the
chief-steward who had made a hundred and twenty voyages on this
very ship.
Beautiful weather; a mild southwest blow, with a moderate beam-sea;
only the deck would come up smack against the soles of his boots in a
most unexpected and aggravating manner. But after the third day out,
he found his sea-legs and learned how to "lean." From two till five his
time was his own, and a very good deal of this time he devoted to
Henley and Morris and Walt Whitman, an ancient brier between his
teeth and a canister of excellent tobacco at his elbow. Odd, isn't it, that
an Englishman without his pipe is as incomplete as a Manx cat, which,
as doubtless you know, has no tail. After all, does a Manx cat know
that it is incomplete? Let me say, then, as incomplete as a small boy
without pockets.
Toward his fellow stewards he was friendly without being
companionable; and as they were of a decent sort, they let him go his
way.
Several times during the voyage he opened his trunk and took out the
manuscripts. Hang it, they weren't so bally bad. If he could still re-read

them, after an hour or two with Henley, there must be some merit to
them.
One afternoon he sat alone on the edge of his bunk. The sun was
pouring into the porthole; intermittently it flashed over him. Suddenly
and alertly he got up, looked out, listened intently, then stepped back
into the cabin and locked the door. Again he listened. There was no
sound except the steady heart-beats of the great engines below. He sat
down sidewise, took out the chamois bag which hung around his neck,
and poured the contents out on the blanket. Blue stones, rather dull at
first; but ah! when the sun awoke the fires in them: blue as the flower o'
the corn, the flame of burning sulphur. He gathered them up and slowly
trickled them through his fingers. Sapphires, unset, beautiful as a
woman's eyes. He replaced them in the chamois bag; and for the rest of
the afternoon went about his affairs preoccupiedly, grave as a bishop
under his miter. For, all said and done, he had much to be grave about.
In one of the panels of the partition which separated the cabin from the
next, there was a crack. A human eye could see through it very well.
And did.
My young poet had "signed on" under the name of Thomas Webb. It
was not assumed. For years he had been known in the haberdashery as
Webb. There was more to it, however; there was a tail to the kite. The
English have an inordinate fondness for hyphens, for