Little God Ben. J. Farjeon Jefferson
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‘Something’s goin’ ter ’appen,’ said Ben, as the ship rolled.
‘Well, see it don’t ’appen ’ere,’ replied a fellow-stoker apprehensively.
‘I don’t mean that sort of ’appen,’ answered Ben. ‘Yer feels that in yer stummick. I feels this in me knuckles. Whenever me knuckles goes funny, something ’appens.’
The fellow-stoker did not care much for the conversation. But they were off duty together, drawing in a little evening air to mingle with the coal-dust in their throats, and it was Ben or nothing. So he murmured,
‘Wot’s goin’ ter ’appen?’
‘I dunno,’ said Ben. ‘Orl I knows is that it is. It’s a sort of a hitch like. Once it was afore I fell inter a barrel o’ beer.’
‘I wouldn’t mind ticklin’ a bit fer that,’ observed the fellow-stoker.
‘Ah, but it ain’t always so nice. Another time it was afore a nassassinashun. I fergit ’oo was nassassinated. A king or somethin’. And another time I went ter bed and fahnd the cat ’ad ’ad kittens. I slep’ on the floor. Yus, but they never hitched like this. Not the kittens, me knuckles. If somethin’ ’orrerble don’t ’appen afore midnight I’ve never seen a corpse!’
The fellow-stoker’s dislike of the conversation increased. He preferred conversations beginning, ‘Have you heard the one about the lady of Gloucester?’ But Ben was a human anomaly, a man with a dirty face and a clean mind, and some error in his make-up had eliminated all interest in Gloucestershire ladies. It was unnatural.
‘’Ere, that’s enough about corpses,’ growled the fellow-stoker, ‘and I’ll bet you ain’t seen none, neither!’
‘Lumme, I was born among ’em!’ retorted Ben. ‘I spends orl me life tryin’ ter git away from ’em. If there’s a star called Corpse I was born under it! I could tell yer things, mate, as ’d mike yer eyes pop aht o’ their sockets. I seed one in a hempty ’ouse runnin’ abart—oi, look aht!’
The ship gave a violent lurch and threw them together. As they untied themselves Ben continued:
‘It mide me run abart, too.’
‘’Ere, I’ve ’ad enough of you!’ gasped the fellow-stoker, and hurried away to less gruesome climes.
Ben looked after him disappointedly. He hadn’t meant to be gruesome. He had merely been relating history. He didn’t like corpses any better than the next man, but you talked about what you knew about, and there it was. If Ben had lived among buttercups and daisies, he’d have talked about those, and would infinitely have preferred it.
He gazed at his knuckles. ‘Somethin’ orful!’ he muttered. He stretched them, opening and closing his fingers. He shook them. The prophetic itch remained. He tried to forget them, and stared at the heaving grey sea.
It shouldn’t have been grey, and it shouldn’t have been heaving. It should have been blue and calm, like the posters that had advertised this cruise, and stars should be coming out to illuminate sentiment. There was a lot of sentiment on the ship. Ben had spotted some of it, and had envied it in the secret labyrinths of his heart. They would be dancing soon up above. ‘’Ow’d I look in a boiled shirt,’ he wondered, ‘with a gal pasted onter it?’ But the Pacific Ocean often belies its name, and it was belying it drastically at this moment. Waves were sweeping across it in angry white-topped lines, indignantly slapping the ship that impeded them and sending up furies of spray. The wind was in an equally bad temper. It made you want to hold on to things. ‘I didn’t orter’ve come on this ’ere trip,’ decided Ben. ‘I orter’ve tiken a job ’oldin’ ’orses!’ Had he known the job to which the wind and the waves were speeding him, he would probably have shut his eyes tight and dived into them.
But he was spared that knowledge, and meanwhile the rolling ship and his itching knuckles were quite enough to go on with. It wasn’t merely the itching that worried him. It was a vague sense of responsibility that accompanied the inconvenience. When you receive a warning, you ought to pass it on. ‘Course, I couldn’t ’ave stopped the kittens,’ he reflected, ‘but I might ’ave stopped the nassassinashun!’
The Second Engineer staggered into view. He, like the stokers, had come up for a little air, and was getting larger doses than he had bargained for.
‘Whew!’ he exclaimed. ‘Dirty weather!’
‘Yer right, sir,’ answered Ben. ‘Somethin’s goin’ ter ’appen.’
‘Going to happen?’ grinned the Second Engineer, as another fountain of spray shot up and drenched them. ‘It’s happening, ain’t it?’
‘Yus, but I means wuss’n this,’ replied Ben, darkly. ‘Me knuckles is hitchin’.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ said the Second Engineer politely.
‘Knuckles, sir—hitchen’,’ repeated Ben. ‘That’s ’ow I knows. Yer may larf, but yer carn’t git away from it, when me knuckles hitch, things ’appen.’
The Second Engineer was a good-natured man. He could retain an even temperament with the thermometer at 120. He had to. But superstition was one of his bugbears, and he always came down on it, particularly when the atmosphere was a bit nervy. He was aware of its disastrous potentialities.
‘Now, listen, funny-mug!’ he remarked. ‘I know that itches are supposed to mean things. If your right eye itches it’s good luck and if your left eye itches it’s bad luck, and if they both itch it’s damn bad luck—but knuckles are a new one on me! Shall I tell you what all this itching really means?’
‘Somethin’s goin’ ter ’appen,’ blinked Ben.
‘No, you dolt!’ roared the Second Engineer. ‘It means you want a good scratch! So give your knuckles a good scratch and stop talking about ’em! Get me? Because if you don’t, sonny, I’ll give you a taste of my knuckles!’
Then he passed on.
‘Meet yer when the boat goes dahn!’ muttered Ben after him.
His retort increased his depression. It was the first time he had definitely focussed his fears. Of course, that was what his misbehaving knuckles meant—the boat was going down!
‘Well, wot’s it matter?’ he reflected, catching hold of a rail as the ship heaved again. ‘Am I afraid o’ dyin’? Yus!’
The handsome admission completed his depression.
But Ben was never wholly absorbed in his own discomforts. An under-dog himself, he had a fellow feeling for other under-dogs, and the stokehold and engine-room were full of them. If they weren’t particularly nice to him and kicked him about a bit, well, who was nice to him—barring, perhaps, the Second Engineer one time in three—and who didn’t kick him about? He’d been born a football, and it was human to kick anything that bounced. And even the top-dogs did not arouse Ben’s personal enmity. The world had to contain all sorts of people to make it go round, and he was a man of peace, though he found little. It would be a pity, for instance, if that pretty girl in the blue frock—the one the Third Officer had brought down yesterday to have