This "Waiting for Godet" kind of story is quite familiar to me, whether it be in the hills of Ethiopia, the Appalacians, or the coast of Maine. Even C. Fox Smith had such a story about an "adventure" that almost happened when she and a friend were invited aboard a small whale processing vessel on the Victoria waterfront one dark evening. Here's how she described it from SHIP ALLEY, pp. 72-78:
I once had the beginning of a first-class adventure. I say the beginning, because, as will be seen, nothing really happened. But all the essential material was there. The people, the setting, the whole atmosphere of the thing might be a fragment of some unfinished "Ebb Tide" or "Wreckers." It set one spinning romance on the instant.
We were fishing from the Outer Wharf at Victoria one fine, magical evening, the stars just beginning to glow in the sunset-flushed sky, a gleam of phosphorescence showing in the shadow of the piles or flashing from a line as it was drawn from the water. A light, but rather cold, wind was blowing off the snowy summits of the Olympic Mountains across the strait, which was perhaps the reason why the black bass were sulky, and showed not the slightest interest in the fascination of the orthodox scrap of white rag flaunted before their languid noses.
There were no deep-sea ships at the wharf. A China liner had been and gone, and left some piles of interesting-looking bales and bundles; but otherwise there was nothing but a very small coaster, rocking up and down on the tide at the inner berth, her mooring creaking on the bollards as she lifted and fell. She was so small and dark that at first you hardly noticed her; there was no light about her but the glimmer of the lantern a man had just hoisted in the rigging, and a round yellow eye that showed a cabin window. She was a short, squat, barge-like little vessel, with one stumpy mast, and a funnel like a stove-pipe sticking up amidships. Her one boat gleamed white in the half light. You could see her name – "Golconda" – across her stern, as if she were some stately East Indiaman at the very least, instead of a mere grubby, uninteresting little coaster such as hang about in shoals in the wake of the deep-sea traders on the Pacific Coast.
There did not seem to be anyone stirring about her; but presently a man detached himself from her shadow and came and stood silent beside me. I went on fishing a while before he spoke.
"You vill not cass any more fishes to-night. See?"
"Probably not," I said; "not much luck this evening."
"You vill not haf any luck while I watch you," he said, with a grudging laugh. "I vas very unlucky man. See? All my life I vas very unlucky man."
This promised to be more interesting than the coy black bass. I left off fishing and talked to the son of ill-luck.
He proved to be the skipper of the queer little "Golconda," a Norwegian by birth who has sailed in Liverpool ships ever since he "vas lidde tiny boy." His life had been chiefly in sailing ships and he spoke regretfully of their comfort and cleanliness. "None of did dirt and schmuts and stinks" – he waved his hand in the direction of the "Golcondra," rocking peacefully at her berth.
It seemed that her business was a rather specially odoriferous one, that of fetching and carrying cargoes of whale oil and whale fertilizer from the trying stations on the West Coast of Vancouver Island. I have never had the pleasure of being to the leeward of a trying station in full blast, but I am assured on good authority that the reducing of leviathan to merchantable elements is one of the most knock-down processes in the smelly line that the human senses can meet with.
Nevertheless, whaling is one of the most ancient and romantic of deep-sea trades, and the "Golcondra's" skipper having been through the whole business himself, could spin some interesting yarns in his queer broken English. So we sat there on the edge of the Outer Wharf while the afterglow faded out of the sky, and talked – or rather he talked – about the bowhead and the killer and the sperm whale, about the deeds of boat steerers and harpooners and whalers' crews, all in the brave days gone by. For with the coming of steam much of the old-time glamour has gone from the "spouter's" trade. The whalemen of the old school say that it is owing to the advent of the steam vessels that whales are becoming scarcer in the Pacific, as they undoubtedly are. According to their theory, the steamships cause such alarm among the whales that they are keeping more and more to the northern seas, close to the Polar ice-cap and the Arctic Circle. However that may be, it is certain that whales are not taken so readily as they used to be, nor is the fishery the rousing affair it was in the days of Herman Melville's "Moby Dick."
It had got a trifle cold as we sat talking, and an invitation to go on board the "Golconda" and drink a cup of tea was far from unwelcome.
"I 'ave a new Chink cook," said the skipper; "mein old cook he vas run avays, der galoot, an' he take all der cake an' biscuits mit him. Des vas nodding but bread an' butter."
It was very dark on board the "Golcondra," and we groped our way along her cramped deck and so by a black companion-way, like a scuttle leading into hell's forecastle, into the tiny cuddy, where an evil-looking Chinaman was shuffling in and out on slippered feet, setting out enamel cups and saucers on an oilcloth-covered table.
It was not until you got into the cuddy that the "Golcondra's" really salient point forced itself upon your notice – her "aura," so to speak, the thing of which her name in future always remind you. And that thing, that aura, was the smell of blubber.
It was everywhere. It was on the "Golcondra" herself, without and within; on the deck, the boat, the ropes, the rails; in the companion and in the cabin; on the skipper and the cook. I have not a doubt but it was also on the enamel cups and saucers, and I'm certain I would have been in the tea. That point, however, as will be presently seen, I never put positively to the proof. It lurked also, about one's own clothes long afterwards, and came back to you in vague, stealthy whiffs from the creases of your pocket-handkerchief.
The skipper had suddenly become quite silent. He sat down by the table, with his elbows upon it, and gnawed moodily at his nails. In the light of the smoky oil lamp I saw him for the first time – a swarthy, saturnine-looking fellow, or a dark Celtic rather than the usual fair Scandinavian type. Between the side of the vessel and the piles of the wharf the tide muttered and chuckled to itself like people talking, and somewhere in the heart of the little ship an engine kept chug-chugging.
It was perhaps out of this half-silence and the strange surroundings in the yellow, smoky light of the lamp that there grew up a queer feeling of something that was going to happen, something for which the "Golcondra" was waiting, for which the silent man nibbling his nails, was waiting, and the pulsing engine and the plotting, whispering tide. The commonplace little steamer had somehow become secret, sinister, threatening. I could no more have drunk that cup of tea than a potion brewed by a Borgia – and that not by reason of its blubbery potentialities.
Presently a large man in dungarees came on, reeking of blubber like the rest, whom the skipper introduced as "my chief mate." I don't know where the rest of the mates were, but I imagine it must have been a sort of courtesy title as regarded the "chief," as also in the case of the "chief" engineer, who came clattering down the companion, amazingly smart in his shoregoing clothes. The mate, after having fired off the surprising information that he was a "kind of cosmopolitan," became as silent as the captain. The engineer saved the situation. He talked for both in an engaging South Irish brogue, and on an amazing variety of themes. But the sense of queer, brooding expectancy remained in spite of him.
And then … It may have been the smell of blubber; it may have been the motion of the little ship as she rose and fell; it may have been – for my part I believe it was – a sort of panic.
"Oh, dear … I must go!" exclaimed my fellow-guest suddenly, and made a dash for the companion.
She said – rather lamely, in my private opinion – that she felt queer. Everyone was very sorry. The skipper presented us with two pieces of gill bone "for curios." And the spell was broken. The "Golcondra" was a commonplace little tub that smelt of blubber. And the adventure, if there was going to be one, never came off.
I wonder though … A few months afterwards, a paragraph caught my eye in a local newspaper to the effect that the whaling tender "Golcondra" had been burned to the water's edge on the Fraser River at Vancouver, with her crew sleeping in their bunks. My friend the cosmopolitan mate was badly burned in an attempt at rescue. As for the skipper – I don't know what became of him, but the loss of his ship would no doubt confirm his belief that he "vas very unlucky man."