The sunken wreck, marked by one elderly
Arab in a little boat with a red flag, and there was about five foot
clearance on each side for the P. & O. She went through a-tiptoe,
because even fifty tons of dynamite will jar a boat, perceptibly, and
the tramp held more - very much more, not to mention detonators. By some
absurd chance, almost the only passenger who knew about the thing at the
time was an old lady rather proud of the secret.
'Ah,' she said, in the middle of that agonised glide, 'you may depend
upon it that if everybody knew what, I know, they'd all be on the other
side of the ship.'
Later on, the authorities blew up the tramp with infinite precautions
from some two miles off, for which reason she neither destroyed the Suez
Canal nor dislocated the Sweet Water Canal alongside, but merely dug out
a hole a hundred feet or a hundred yards deep, and so vanished from
Lloyd's register.
But no stories could divert one long from the peculiarities of that
amazing line which exists strictly for itself. There was a bathroom
(occupied) at the windy end of an open alleyway. In due time the bather
came out.
Said the steward, as he swabbed out the tub for his successor: 'That was
the Chief Engineer. 'E's been some time. Must 'ave 'ad a mucky job
below, this mornin'.'
I have a great admiration for Chief Engineers. They are men in
authority, needing all the comforts and aids that can possibly be given
them - such as bathrooms of their own close to their own cabins, where
they can clean off at leisure.
It is not fair to mix them up with the ruck of passengers, nor is it
done on real ships. Nor, when a passenger wants a bath in the evening,
do the stewards of real ships roll their eyes like vergers in a
cathedral and say, 'We'll see if it can be managed.' They double down
the alleyway and shout, 'Matcham' or 'Ponting' or 'Guttman,' and in
fifteen seconds one of those swift three has the taps going and the
towels out. Real ships are not annexes of Westminster Abbey or Borstal
Reformatory. They supply decent accommodation in return for good money,
and I imagine that their directors instruct their staffs to look pleased
while at work.
Some generations back there must have been an idea that the P. & O. was
vastly superior to all lines afloat - a sort of semipontifical show not
to be criticised. How much of the notion was due to its own excellence
and how much to its passenger-traffic monopoly does not matter.
