the clocks of the city have struck two. where can a man get food? calcutta is not rich in respect of dainty accommodation. you can stay your stomach at peliti’s or bonsard’s, but their shops are not to be found in hasting street, or in the places where brokers fly to and fro in office-jauns, sweating and growing visibly rich. there must be some sort of entertainment where sailors congregate. “honest bombay jack” supplies nothing but burma cheroots and whisky in liqueur-glasses, but in lal bazar, not far from “the sailors’ coffee-rooms,” a board gives bold advertisement that “officers and seamen can find good quarters.” in evidence a row of neat officers and seamen are sitting on a bench by the “hotel” door smoking. there is an almost military likeness in their clothes. perhaps “honest bombay jack” only keeps one kind of felt hat and one brand of suit. when jack of the mercantile marine is sober, he is very sober. when he is drunk he is—but ask the river police what a lean, mad yankee can do with his nails and teeth. these gentlemen smoking on the bench are impassive almost as red indians. their attitudes are unrestrained, and they do not wear braces. nor, it would appear from the bill of fare, are they particular as to what they eat when they attend tâble d’hôte. the fare is substantial and the regulation peg—every house has its own depth of peg if you will refrain from stopping ganymede—something to wonder at. three fingers and a trifle over seems to be the use of the officers and seamen who are talking so quietly in the doorway. one says—he has evidently finished a long story—“and so he shipped for four pound ten with a first mate’s certificate and all, and that was in a german barque.” another spits with conviction and says genially, without raising his voice: “that was a hell of a ship; who knows her?” no answer from the panchayet, but a dane or a german wants to know whether the myra is “up” yet. a dry, red-haired man gives her exact position in the river—(how in the world can he know?)—and the probable hour of her arrival. the grave debate drifts into a discussion of a recent river accident, whereby a big steamer was damaged, and had to put back and discharge cargo. a burly gentleman who is taking a constitutional down lal bazar strolls up and says: “i tell you she fouled her own chain with her own forefoot. hev you seen the plates?” “no.” “then how the —— can any —— like you —— say what it —— well was?” he passes on, having delivered his highly flavored opinion without heat or passion. no one seems to resent the expletives.
let us get down to the river and see this stamp of men more thoroughly. clark russell has told us that their lives are hard enough in all conscience. what are their pleasures and diversions? the port office, where live the gentlemen who make improvements in the port of calcutta, ought to supply information. it stands large and fair, and built in an orientalized manner after the italians at the corner of fairlie place upon the great strand road, and a continual clamor of traffic by land and by sea goes up throughout the day and far into the night against its windows. this is a place to enter more reverently than the bengal legislative council, for it houses the direction of the uncertain hugli down to the sandheads, owns enormous wealth, and spends huge sums on the frontaging of river banks, the expansion of jetties, and the manufacture of docks costing two hundred lakhs of rupees. two million tons of sea-going shippage yearly find their way up and down the river by the guidance of the port office, and the men of the port office know more than it is good for men to hold in their heads. they can without reference to telegraphic bulletins give the position of all the big steamers, coming up or going down, from the hugli to the sea, day by day, with their tonnage, the names of their captains, and the nature of their cargo. looking out from the verandah of their offices over a lancer-regiment of masts, they can declare truthfully the name of every ship within eye-scope, with the day and hour when she will depart.
in a room at the bottom of the building lounge big men, carefully dressed. now there is a type of face which belongs almost exclusively to bengal cavalry officers—majors for choice. everybody knows the bronzed, black-moustached, clear-speaking native cavalry officer. he exists unnaturally in novels, and naturally on the frontier. these men in the big room have its cast of face so strongly marked that one marvels what officers are doing by the river. “have they come to book passengers for home?” “those men! they’re pilots. some of them draw between two and three thousand rupees a month. they are responsible for half-a-million pounds’ worth of cargo sometimes.” they certainly are men, and they carry themselves as such. they confer together by twos and threes, and appeal frequently to shipping lists.
“isn’t a pilot a man who always wears a pea-jacket and shouts through a speaking-trumpet?” “well, you can ask those gentlemen if you like. you’ve got your notions from home pilots. ours aren’t that kind exactly. they are a picked service, as carefully weeded as the indian civil. some of ’em have brothers in it, and some belong to the old indian army families.” but they are not all equally well paid. the calcutta papers sometimes echo the groans of the junior pilots who are not allowed the handling of ships over a certain tonnage. as it is yearly growing cheaper to build one big steamer than two little ones, these juniors are crowded out, and, while the seniors get their thousands, some of the youngsters make at the end of one month exactly thirty rupees. this is a grievance with them; and it seems well-founded.
in the flats above the pilots’ room are hushed and chapel-like offices, all sumptuously fitted, where englishmen write and telephone and telegraph, and deft babus forever draw maps of the shifting hugli. any hope of understanding the work of the port commissioners is thoroughly dashed by being taken through the port maps of a quarter of a century past. men have played with the hugli as children play with a gutter-runnel, and, in return, the hugli once rose and played with men and ships till the strand road was littered with the raffle and the carcasses of big ships. there are photos on the walls of the cyclone of ’64, when the thunder came inland and sat upon an american barque, obstructing all the traffic. very curious are these photos, and almost impossible to believe. how can a big, strong steamer have her three masts razed to deck level? how can a heavy, country boat be pitched on to the poop of a high-walled liner? and how can the side be bodily torn out of a ship? the photos say that all these things are possible, and men aver that a cyclone may come again and scatter the craft like chaff. outside the port office are the export and import sheds, buildings that can hold a ship’s cargo a-piece, all standing on reclaimed ground. here be several strong smells, a mass of railway lines, and a multitude of men. “do you see where that trolly is standing, behind the big p. and o. berth? in that place as nearly as may be the govindpur went down about twenty years ago, and began to shift out!” “but that is solid ground.” “she sank there, and the next tide made a scour-hole on one side of her. the returning tide knocked her into it. then the mud made up behind her. next tide the business was repeated—always the scour-hole in the mud and the filling up behind her. so she rolled and was pushed out and out until she got in the way of the shipping right out yonder, and we had to blow her up. when a ship sinks in mud or quicksand she regularly digs her own grave and wriggles herself into it deeper and deeper till she reaches moderately solid stuff. then she sticks.” horrible idea, is it not, to go down and down with each tide into the foul hugli mud?
close to the port offices is the shipping office, where the captains engage their crews. the men must produce their discharges from their last ships in the presence of the shipping master, or, as they call him, “the deputy shipping.” he passes them as correct after having satisfied himself that they are not deserters from other ships, and they then sign articles for the voyage. this is the ceremony, beginning with the “dearly beloved” of the crew-hunting captain down to the “amazement” of the identified deserter. there is a dingy building, next door to the sailors’ home, at whose gate stand the cast-ups of all the seas in all manner of raiment. there are seedee boys, bombay serangs and madras fishermen of the salt villages, malays who insist upon marrying native women, grow jealous and run amok: malay-hindus, hindu-malay-whites, burmese, burma-whites, burma-native-whites, italians with gold earrings and a thirst for gambling, yankees of all the states, with mulattoes and pure buck-niggers, red and rough danes, cingalese, cornish boys who seem fresh taken from the plough-tail, “corn-stalks” from colonial ships where they got four pound ten a month as seamen, tun-bellied germans, cockney mates keeping a little aloof from the crowd and talking in knots together, unmistakable “tommies” who have tumbled into seafaring life by some mistake, cockatoo-tufted welshmen spitting and swearing like cats, broken-down loafers, gray-headed, penniless, and pitiful, swaggering boys, and very quiet men with gashes and cuts on their faces. it is an ethnological museum where all the specimens are playing comedies and tragedies. the head of it all is the “deputy shipping,” and he sits, supported by an english policeman whose fists are knobby, in a great chair of state. the “deputy shipping” knows all the iniquity of the river-side, all the ships, all the captains, and a fair amount of the men. he is fenced off from the crowd by a strong wooden railing, behind which are gathered those who “stand and wait,” the unemployed of the mercantile marine. they have had their spree—poor devils—and now they will go to sea again on as low a wage as three pound ten a month, to fetch up at the end in some shanghai stew or san francisco hell. they have turned their backs on the seductions of the howrah boarding-houses and the delights of colootolla. if fate will, “nightingales” will know them no more for a season, and their successors may paint collinga bazar vermillion. but what captain will take some of these battered, shattered wrecks whose hands shake and whose eyes are red?
enter suddenly a bearded captain, who has made his selection from the crowd on a previous day, and now wants to get his men passed. he is not fastidious in his choice. his eleven seem a tough lot for such a mild-eyed, civil-spoken man to manage. but the captain in the shipping office and the captain on the ship are two different things. he brings his crew up to the “deputy shipping’s” bar, and hands in their greasy, tattered discharges. but the heart of the “deputy shipping” is hot within him, because, two days ago, a howrah crimp stole a whole crew from a down-dropping ship, insomuch that the captain had to come back and whip up a new crew at one o’clock in the day. evil will it be if the “deputy shipping” finds one of these bounty-jumpers in the chosen crew of the blenkindoon, let us say.
the “deputy shipping” tells the story with heat. “i didn’t know they did such things in calcutta,” says the captain. “do such things! they’d steal the eye-teeth out of your head there, captain.” he picks up a discharge and calls for michael donelly, who is a loose-knit, vicious-looking irish-american who chews. “stand up, man, stand up!” michael donelly wants to lean against the desk, and the english policeman won’t have it. “what was your last ship?” “fairy queen.” “when did you leave her?” “’bout ’leven days.” “captain’s name?” “flahy.” “that’ll do. next man: jules anderson.” jules anderson is a dane. his statements tally with the discharge-certificate of the united states, as the eagle attesteth. he is passed and falls back. slivey, the englishman, and david, a huge plum-colored negro who ships as cook, are also passed. then comes bassompra, a little italian, who speaks english. “what’s your last ship?” “ferdinand.” “no, after that?” “german barque.” bassompra does not look happy. “when did she sail?” “about three weeks ago.” “what’s her name?” “haidée.” “you deserted from her?” “yes, but she’s left port.” the “deputy shipping” runs rapidly through a shipping-list, throws it down with a bang. “’twon’t do. no german barque haidée here for three months. how do i know you don’t belong to the jackson’s crew? cap’ain, i’m afraid you’ll have to ship another man. he must stand over. take the rest away and make ’em sign.”
the bead-eyed bassompra seems to have lost his chance of a voyage, and his case will be inquired into. the captain departs with his men and they sign articles for the voyage, while the “deputy shipping” tells strange tales of the sailorman’s life. “they’ll quit a good ship for the sake of a spree, and catch on again at three pound ten, and by jove, they’ll let their skippers pay ’em at ten rupees to the sovereign—poor beggars! as soon as the money’s gone they’ll ship, but not before. every one under rank of captain engages here. the competition makes first mates ship sometimes for five pounds or as low as four ten a month.” (the gentleman in the boarding-house was right, you see.) “a first mate’s wages are seven ten or eight, and foreign captains ship for twelve pounds a month and bring their own small stores—everything, that is to say, except beef, peas, flour, coffee, and molasses.”
these things are not pleasant to listen to while the hungry-eyed men in the bad clothes lounge and scratch and loaf behind the railing. what comes to them in the end? they die, it seems, though that is not altogether strange. they die at sea in strange and horrible ways; they die, a few of them, in the kintals, being lost and suffocated in the great sink of calcutta; they die in strange places by the waterside, and the hugli takes them away under the mooring chains and the buoys, and casts them up on the sands below, if the river police have missed the capture. they sail the sea because they must live; and there is no end to their toil. very, very few find haven of any kind, and the earth, whose ways they do not understand, is cruel to them, when they walk upon it to drink and be merry after the manner of beasts. jack ashore is a pretty thing when he is in a book or in the blue jacket of the navy. mercantile jack is not so lovely. later on, we will see where his “sprees” lead him.
“the city was of night—perchance of death,
but certainly of night.”
—the city of dreadful night.
in the beginning, the police were responsible. they said in a patronizing way that, merely as a matter of convenience, they would prefer to take a wanderer round the great city themselves, sooner than let him contract a broken head on his own account in the slums. they said that there were places and places where a white man, unsupported by the arm of the law, would be robbed and mobbed; and that there were other places where drunken seamen would make it very unpleasant for him. there was a night fixed for the patrol, but apologies were offered beforehand for the comparative insignificance of the tour.
“come up to the fire lookout in the first place, and then you’ll be able to see the city.” this was at no. 22, lal bazar, which is the headquarters of the calcutta police, the centre of the great web of telephone wires where justice sits all day and all night looking after one million people and a floating population of one hundred thousand. but her work shall be dealt with later on. the fire lookout is a little sentry-box on the top of the three-storied police offices. here a native watchman waits always, ready to give warning to the brigade below if the smoke rises by day or the flames by night in any ward of the city. from this eyrie, in the warm night, one hears the heart of calcutta beating. northward, the city stretches away three long miles, with three more miles of suburbs beyond, to dum-dum and barrackpore. the lamplit dusk on this side is full of noises and shouts and smells. close to the police office, jovial mariners at the sailors’ coffee-shop are roaring hymns. southerly, the city’s confused lights give place to the orderly lamp-rows of the maidan and chouringhi, where the respectabilities live and the police have very little to do. from the east goes up to the sky the clamor of sealdah, the rumble of the trams, and the voices of all bow bazar chaffering and making merry. westward are the business quarters, hushed now, the lamps of the shipping on the river, and the twinkling lights on the howrah side. it is a wonderful sight—this pisgah view of a huge city resting after the labors of the day. “does the noise of traffic go on all through the hot weather?” “of course. the hot months are the busiest in the year and money’s tightest. you should see the brokers cutting about at that season. calcutta can’t stop, my dear sir.” “what happens then?” “nothing happens; the death-rate goes up a little. that’s all!” even in february, the weather would, up-country, be called muggy and stifling, but calcutta is convinced that it is her cold season. the noises of the city grow perceptibly; it is the night side of calcutta waking up and going abroad. jack in the sailors’ coffee-shop is singing joyously: “shall we gather at the river-the beautiful, the beautiful, the river?” what an incongruity there is about his selections! however, that it amuses before it shocks the listeners, is not to be doubted. an englishman, far from his native land, is liable to become careless, and it would be remarkable if he did otherwise in ill-smelling calcutta. there is a clatter of hoofs in the courtyard below. some of the mounted police have come in from somewhere or other out of the great darkness. a clog-dance of iron hoofs follows, and an englishman’s voice is heard soothing an agitated horse who seems to be standing on his hind legs. some of the mounted police are going out into the great darkness. “what’s on?” “walk-round at government house. the reserve men are being formed up below. they’re calling the roll.” the reserve men are all english, and big english at that. they form up and tramp out of the courtyard to line government place, and see that mrs. lollipop’s brougham does not get smashed up by sirdar chuckerbutty bahadur’s lumbering c-spring barouche with the two raw walers. very military men are the calcutta european police in their set-up, and he who knows their composition knows some startling stories of gentlemen-rankers and the like. they are, despite the wearing climate they work in and the wearing work they do, as fine five-score of englishmen as you shall find east of suez.
listen for a moment from the fire lookout to the voices of the night, and you will see why they must be so. two thousand sailors of fifty nationalities are adrift in calcutta every sunday, and of these perhaps two hundred are distinctly the worse for liquor. there is a mild row going on, even now, somewhere at the back of bow bazar, which at nightfall fills with sailormen who have a wonderful gift of falling foul of the native population. to keep the queen’s peace is of course only a small portion of police duty, but it is trying. the burly president of the lock-up for european drunks-calcutta central lock-up is worth seeing-rejoices in a sprained thumb just now, and has to do his work left-handed in consequence. but his left hand is a marvellously persuasive one, and when on duty his sleeves are turned up to the shoulder that the jovial mariner may see that there is no deception. the president’s labors are handicapped in that the road of sin to the lock-up runs through a grimy little garden-the brick paths are worn deep with the tread of many drunken feet-where a man can give a great deal of trouble by sticking his toes into the ground and getting mixed up with the shrubs. “a straight run in” would be much more convenient both for the president and the drunk. generally speaking—and here police experience is pretty much the same all over the civilized world-a woman drunk is a good deal worse than a man drunk. she scratches and bites like a chinaman and swears like several fiends. strange people may be unearthed in the lock-ups. here is a perfectly true story, not three weeks old. a visitor, an unofficial one, wandered into the native side of the spacious accommodation provided for those who have gone or done wrong. a wild-eyed babu rose from the fixed charpoy and said in the best of english: “good-morning, sir.” “good-morning; who are you, and what are you in for?” then the babu, in one breath: “i would have you know that i do not go to prison as a criminal but as a reformer. you’ve read the vicar of wakefield?” “ye-es.” “well, i am the vicar of bengal-at least, that’s what i call myself.” the visitor collapsed. he had not nerve enough to continue the conversation. then said the voice of the authority: “he’s down in connection with a cheating case at serampore. may be shamming. but he’ll be looked to in time.”
the best place to hear about the police is the fire lookout. from that eyrie one can see how difficult must be the work of control over the great, growling beast of a city. by all means let us abuse the police, but let us see what the poor wretches have to do with their three thousand natives and one hundred englishmen. from howrah and bally and the other suburbs at least a hundred thousand people come in to calcutta for the day and leave at night. also chandernagore is handy for the fugitive law-breaker, who can enter in the evening and get away before the noon of the next day, having marked his house and broken into it.
“but how can the prevalent offence be housebreaking in a place like this?” “easily enough. when you’ve seen a little of the city you’ll see. natives sleep and lie about all over the place, and whole quarters are just so many rabbit-warrens. wait till you see the machua bazar. well, besides the petty theft and burglary, we have heavy cases of forgery and fraud, that leave us with our wits pitted against a bengali’s. when a bengali criminal is working a fraud of the sort he loves, he is about the cleverest soul you could wish for. he gives us cases a year long to unravel. then there are the murders in the low houses—very curious things they are. you’ll see the house where sheikh babu was murdered presently, and you’ll understand. the burra bazar and jora bagan sections are the two worst ones for heavy cases; but colootollah is the most aggravating. there’s colootollah over yonder—that patch of darkness beyond the lights. that section is full of tuppenny-ha’penny petty cases, that keep the men up all night and make ’em swear. you’ll see colootollah, and then perhaps you’ll understand. bamun bustee is the quietest of all, and lal bazar and bow bazar, as you can see for yourself, are the rowdiest. you’ve no notion what the natives come to the thannahs for. a naukar will come in and want a summons against his master for refusing him half-an-hour’s chuti. i suppose it does seem rather revolutionary to an up-country man, but they try to do it here. now wait a minute, before we go down into the city and see the fire brigade turned out. business is slack with them just now, but you time ’em and see.” an order is given, and a bell strikes softly thrice. there is an orderly rush of men, the click of a bolt, a red fire-engine, spitting and swearing with the sparks flying from the furnace, is dragged out of its shelter. a huge brake, which holds supplementary hoses, men, and hatchets, follows, and a hose-cart is the third on the list. the men push the heavy things about as though they were pith toys. five horses appear. two are shot into the fire-engine, two—monsters these—into the brake, and the fifth, a powerful beast, warranted to trot fourteen miles an hour, backs into the hose-cart shafts. the men clamber up, some one says softly, “all ready there,” and with an angry whistle the fire-engine, followed by the other two, flies out into lal bazar, the sparks trailing behind. time—1 min. 40 secs. “they’ll find out it’s a false alarm, and come back again in five minutes.” “why?” “because there will be no constables on the road to give ’em the direction of the fire, and because the driver wasn’t told the ward of the outbreak when he went out!” “do you mean to say that you can from this absurd pigeon-loft locate the wards in the night-time?” “of course: what would be the good of a lookout if the man couldn’t tell where the fire was?” “but it’s all pitchy black, and the lights are so confusing.”
“ha! ha! you’ll be more confused in ten minutes. you’ll have lost your way as you never lost it before. you’re going to go round bow bazar section.”
“and the lord have mercy on my soul!” calcutta, the darker portion of it, does not look an inviting place to dive into at night.
