January ji, itji8 
LAND & WATER 
An 111 Wind 
By Francis Brett Young 
13 
1r is always amazing to iiu; liow one tumbles upon stories 
of this kind ; and Dr. Maxwell was really one of tlie 
last men in the work! whom I should have expected to 
appreciate the one Mhich he told mc. As ij. matter of 
lact. lie was wiy diffident about it, and 1 don't imagine that 
anythintj but the peculiar intimacy into which circumstances 
had thrown us would ha\e screwed him up to the point of 
tellin!; it. He was a \Try timid man. This is how it 
happened. I liad come to stay for a wet winter holiday in a 
iisiiiiifj \i!lagc down West, with no companion except a wiry- 
haired terrier puppy, a foolish thing with brown eyes, to which 
1 was just getting attaclied. 
\\V lived, the two of us, in the front room of a widow woman, 
a :\Irs. Seaward, o\erloDking a waste of sea that was nearly 
always sad. We had lighted upon a period of cold casterh- 
winds, blowing over all the great bay from Portland, and 
rolling dun-coloured breakers capped with white against that 
unyielding coast, rank after rank of them ceaselessly charging 
in a hope that was forlorn. Mrs. Seaward's house was jerry- 
built, and in the crevices of her casements the wind whistled 
night and day, so that all the httle space of her bow-window 
was full of colder air then the rest of the room, while I and mv 
dog Tristram (who took his name from Shandy, not froiii 
I.yonesse) shivered over a grate of wrought iron that absorbed 
its own heat. 
Tiiey were uncomfortable rooms ; but when we had 
once got there I felt that we must stay if it were only for 
the poverty of Mrs. Seaward herself and the extraordinarv 
pride which she lavished on them. There was no chance of 
making ourselves at home. Every chair, every cushion, ever\' 
knick-knack had its place, and if one of these were disarranged 
when we left the house it was certain to have been replaced b\- 
the time that we returned. .\nd Tristram was no respecter 
of cushions. I disliked Mrs. Seaward's family photographs. 
I disliked her funeral cards. We disliked, in particular, a 
])ortrait enlarged in a frame of red plush, which sat in judg- 
ment on our breakfast : a very dogmatic not ill-looking young 
man with curled moustaches and a sailor's peaked cap. I 
daresay I should have liked him better if I hadn't always 
taken my meals with him. It was distressing, too, always to 
find Mrs. Seaward in the room when I returned from mv 
walks, standing with her hands clasped in front of her in that 
rcfrigeiator of a bow-window looking out to sea. In the end I 
decided to gi\c her notice, saving my face with the forfeiture 
of a week's rent. 
I screwed m\self up to the act on three days in 
succession : and then, at the precise moment when I needed 
it most, my luck failed me. Tristram, poor httle beast, 
developed a cold on his lungs. I expect I had been careless 
with him, and when night came on I didn't like the look of 
him. I enquired about a vet. The landlady told me there 
wasn't one within ten miles. I asked her if she knew of 
anybody who understood dogs ; and after she'd thought 
about it and mentioned half a dozen people who didn't, she 
came to Dr. Maxwell. I wondered why I hadn't thought of 
asking a doctor before , for, when you come to think of 
It, there's not much difference between a sick dog and a sick 
baby. The same thing had evidently occurred to Mrs. Sea- 
ward. '■ He's splendid witii children," she said.- 
It was a filthy night with a south west wind booming down 
tiie valley and out over tiie sea, but the doctor was quite 
willing to come and see mv patient. 
■' They're nice beasts, dogs, aren't they :' " he said, as he 
pulled on his mackintosh, and then our concern for the small 
;reature's comfort threw us, as I've said, into an intimacy 
svhich was surprising when you consider our short acquaint- 
ance and his exceptional shyness. We sat together smoking 
in front of the fire, beneath the stonv stare of Mrs. Seward's 
relations, listening to the wind and" sometimes talking. 
He had said something about the west wind being good for 
the trawlers, and I had slipped into the ready-made answer 
that it is an ill wind which benefits nobody. He said that 
ho often thought, down on that much-buifeted coast, how 
extraordinarily dependent on wind the men of old. times 
ivere ; how they could never cross a strip of sea without the 
.Mild 's permission, or grind their corn on land. He spoke of 
the nihnitc chances of the wind that was now scattering the 
lertilc pollen from his peach-blossom. " To-morrow it will 
yll be gone,"— and then, rather shyh*. he said : " That 
reminds me,"— and told me the story of the steward on the 
s.s. Malifoit. 
" I expect," he ^aid." that you, as a stranger, imaghie tliat 
this seaboard is hill of loniMiui' ; you c;in -(■<■ iiothing but 
beauty in these small stone cottages and this rugged coast, 
"^'ou don't know how hard life is here— and how dirty. You 
don't realise either how horribh- isolated we arc ; how very 
attracti\e it is — you won't mind me saying sa — to meet a 
stranger like yourself. That's the way "in which Romance 
surprises us, in our chance encounters" with men who come 
here by land or by sea— and particularly by sea. Of course, 
this place has long ceased to be a portof "call for salt-water 
boats : but it so happens that our bay is a harbour of refuge, 
the only one along this coast, from a westerly gale ; and 
sometimes, when it is blowing strong you may sec 30 
vessels sheltering— not the big mail boats that can plug 
through any amount of muck, but great sailing ships troni 
Hamburg, Scandinavian steamers, with deck-cargoes of timber, 
wide-bellied freighters light, and everj? other kind of tramp. 
Sometimes they lie there for a week straining at their anchors 
and then steal away in stormy sunshine. Sometimes thev 
land a sick man— they don't like sick men at sea— and in this 
way I have had more than one adventure. 
" When I was called to visit the Mali/on it was blowing a 
buster. The mate brought the message ashore ; told me that tlie 
steward had hurt his leg and the ' old man ' was getting worried 
about him. Didn't know if the beggar was shamming or not. 
If I were coming I had better prepare for a wetting and pull 
out in their dinghy. He was vers- affable, that mate. He 
said that he'd never \'isited our port before and hoped he 
never would again. ' Talk about scenery and that,' he said, 
' there's plenty of pretty scenery outside the West of Eng- 
land. By tlie way folks talk you'd think there wasn't nice 
country places in Lancasliire. You should hear the birds in 
our garden on a spring morning. My misses feeds the little 
beggars.' He lived at a place called Xewton-le- Willows— 
\vherever that may be. He asked me if I was ' on the square,' 
and seemed disappointed that I wasn't. 
" The Matifon was lying a long way out and I got wetter 
even than I had expected ; but it's a" heartening thing, you 
know, to go butting out through sheeted sprav with the salt 
sticky on your lips— just plugging towards a "point of light 
which wavers and dips some unimaginable distance ahead : 
and then, suddenly, to hear what the wind leaves you of a hail, 
to dissociate something black that looms above you from the 
blackness of the windy sky ; to hear a rope swish down like the 
wind's own tail— and then the splash and suck of water be- 
tween yourself and the hull until your boat and the big ship 
are heaving together. I jumped for the rope ladder, and as I 
looked back the boat and the mate and the two sailors seemed 
to be sucked downw^ards, for the great flank to which I was 
clinging like a fly on a horse heeled bodily over, blotting out 
the stars. I scrambled on to an iron deck g"ritty with coal dust, 
where the captain received me. 
He looked as if he'd been On the bridge for a week. " If the 
beggar's mahngering," he said, " I look to you to tell me. 
If he's really sick you'd better have him ashore. You can't 
satisfy him. Says he's hurt his leg. I don't know. . . . 
He's a good steward, the best I've ever had except a Jap T 
once picked up in Kuchinotsu ; but I'm about fed up with 
him. The chief ofticer will take you for'ard." 
And so, down one iron ladder, up another, down a pre- 
cipitous companion to a stuffy hold. " Blast the Chief," said 
the mate, " the electric ligh't's off— that's the worst of this 
damned company. Short of crew. The donkeyman went 
ashore this morning and came black bUnd. You wait here a 
minute while I get a lantern." 
" He left me standing there at the bottom of the com4)anion. 
It was very dark and smelt of tallow and engine grease. I had 
to hold on to the oily rail of the ladder ; for this part of the 
ship was plunging heavily as though it were angry with the 
strain of the anchors. "The darkness was full of creaking 
sounds, and sometimes the impact of a heavier wave smote her 
bows, making the plates shudder and creak more loudly than 
over. The mate came back carrying a kerosene lamp "with a 
smell that was proper to that fo'c'sle. ' This way,' he said. 
" We passed into a narrow cabin in which there were four 
liunks. It smelt a little of foul opium smoke and a great deal 
of dirt. In the lower bunk on the inner side the mate's 
lantern showed mc a Chhiaman lying on his back breathing 
noisily through his mouth. ' That's our cook,' said the mate. 
' Don't you take no notice of him. He has his little faihngs 
like the rest of us. Tliis is your bird.' 
" He held the light up to the upper of the two opposite 
bunks which were fixed to the flank of the ship, with nothing 
but a thin iron plate between them and the noisy sea. ' Hello 
Jim,' ho said pulling at a nest of grey blankets. ' How arc you 
getting on ^ " 
" ' All right, Mr. Cochran,' said the man under the blankets. 
