To avoid these visitors as much as possible, I refrained from exploring the town over tiringly during the day, and went off with Mead in his shore suit after the evening's football on the dust-patch: and stayed as late as meanderings in the town could make it. We certainly departed from the usual haunts of sailors the first night; went on and on, until even the adventurous Mead had to say: "This is rather a depraved kind of street." And more, there was something in the air--some way off, we heard the interrupted fire of (what roused imagination converted into) a machine gun. The slatternly folk sitting, with white gleams of face or dress in the shadows, by their doors; the herds of unaccustomed faces in the large threadbare bars; the many groups of folk standing expectantly about the street, and our own alien solitude--all gave this sensation of disquiet. In a manner enjoying it, we proceeded, past an orator roaring out in fine fury to a small but intent crowd, and presently found ourselves in a large square with its many lamps, its glossy cars stealing swiftly by or waiting on the rank, its fountains playing like mists among deep green of trees.
Magnificent, and nearly empty, was the café into which we went; brilliant its interior; attached to the gilded columns, how eloquent of drinking as a fine art, its scoreboards announcing the many specialities! We stayed until midnight. Then, having roughly found out our way home, we set out for the docks, and, pausing to divine the sense of a poster giving details of a "Radical" demonstration for the next day, saw the police come hurrying up to a gathering of people round the next bar door. One of the police as he passed us at speed caught his toe against a stone and with his sword and fine feathers came down flat on the pavement. The gathering at the bar door were so absorbed in their topic that no one looked, much less laughed at his loud discomfiture.
Sometimes I found an occasion to leave the _Bonadventure_ in her noisy dishabille, during the day. There was one walk with the wireless operator to a smaller tramp in a distant dock, aboard which somewhat shapelier ship than the _Bonadventure_ he had an acquaintance. Walking over the irregular cobbles and among the railway lines of the wharves in the heat was a sufficient exercise. We left our ship carpeted with coal-dust; passed cattle pounds, grain elevators glaring white, and on the opposite side steamers in process of being loaded or discharged; went along a rail track where the grains which had lain longest had sprung up in unavailing green, and under chutes where sacks of corn were sliding down to the holds of ships. The mate of the _Primrose_ whom we had come to see was thoroughly happy, and resembled almost to a hair my sergeant observer of years before. Putting on a record--his gramophone was actually in order--and offering cigars, he produced an extraordinary picture of his ship, in needlework. The ancient art of the sampler had passed to him. He seemed, I noticed, _of_ his ship: its mahogany-lined saloon and more domestic style were congenial with his paterfamilias air and "Not to-day, thank you" mildness to various business callers. The wireless operator, also, seemed to be less interested in the regulations of his calling and more in photographs of ships and sailors. With these kind spirits in my mind, I was somewhat preoccupied as we walked back the way we came among the pigeons and the dock labourers stretched out under every railway truck and crane for their siesta.