Welsh Journals

CALLING ON CAPTAIN DAVIES AS soon as the door opened and revealed us, 1st Officer Jose Darranatz and myself, Mr. Williams the Shipbroker started to laugh, and he rose quickly from his desk. "Hullo! Hullo! Hullo! I thought 1 might never see you again after the Strike, thought maybe your owners might have diverted your ship to the Russian Soviet or German trade. But since the North Spanish Railway, the Andalusian and Madrid-Alicante Railways, have invited tenders for Welsh coal, my fears are dispelled." So in a few minutes I was transacting those little affairs of maritime business which concern only the Master and the Shipbroker, the chief points of which, however, are to ensure that the vessel will be properly "Entered inwards" at the Customs House, that she will be served with bunkers only of the best, and that she will be accorded the speediest "turn around." It was the first time for Jose to be in this ship- broker's office it was only by chance that he happened to be with me. Whilst we engaged in business he advanced to examine a ship's photo- graph which hung over the fireplace. He interrupted our business. "This ship, she is the Mari Llewelyn! This captain, he is Captain Davies "Yes, she is the Mari Llewelyn," replied Mr. Williams, "owned by the Cymric Steam- ship Company, wrecked in the Danube. Yes, that is old Captain Davies in the foreground, you knew him?" I looked from Jose to the faded yellow photo- graph-the Mari Llewelyn wedged in ice, all the crew standing on the ice, under her starboard side, to pose with brave smiles for the photo- graph, their captain in their midst, a tall, square- shouldered man, with broad face and high cheek- bones and high, commanding forehead, wearing a fur cap. But José spoke no other words. When the sun became brighter and warmer, the sky more blue, the sea lighter in colour and more transparent, when two solitary seagulls en- circled the ship, telling in wild mournful cries of the lonely beauty of the sea, when a red and golden sail, drenched in spray, and glistening with every compelling influence of wind and wave, heralded the Spanish sardine fleet, then it was that José spoke again of Captain Davies and the Mari Llewelyn. "Captain Davies shared the bitterness of my dishonour. My ship, the San Sebastian, also was wrecked in the Danube, at the same time and the same place, just below Constanza. For that it was that I was deprived of my master's ticket and relegated to the rank of first officer. by Rafael Inda "On that night a storm, terrible in its inten- sity, swept up trom the Black Sea, crossing with- out resistance the bleak, flat, marshy Danube delta and driving the Mari Llewelyn and the San Sebastian amongst the trees of a torest. Tower- ing above the trees was the funnel of the Mari Llewelyn. "The storm subsided and the river froze. "The master of the Mari Llewelyn crossed the ice and invited me to penetrate with him to the nearest village. At the first habitation we reached, a peasant's hut, we asked for food, for eggs, for which purpose Captain Davies sketched an egg, but the peasant brought a live chicken "So Monsieur Avgherinos, the Roumanian shipbroker and salvage contractor, came like a bird to its prey, the gendarmes came, the Cus- toms officers came, the ice melted and the floods came, and after the ships had floundered again and broken their backs, after many thousands of leis had been squandered, Lloyds' underwriters ordered the ships to be abandoned and sold for scrap. 'When in Wales call upon me,' said Captain Davies, when he left me in Bucharest. "You remember that very long strike, when under the power of a British Government em- bargo, we were detained in Swansea for many weary weeks I asked you for two days' leave, you remember?" I remembered. "From a main desire to see the country I took train into the interior, to a town called Cardigan, where the railway ended then I took a stick from the hedge and set out to walk to Llan- granog, the home of Captain Davies. "In no part of the world have I seen such grass and such greenness. Simply little fields, hundreds and hundreds of them, rolling away be- fore one's gaze like the waves of the sea, all with their own little hedges, their own little stiles and their own little gates. Some had sheep and cows grazing on their rich, juicy grass. So with the roads and lanes, high hedges bordered them. so with the farmhouses, high trees grew around to seclude them. Hedges, hedges, hedges, everywhere. Everything private, everything en- closed, everything protected and enfolded in-to provide ample opportunity for the grass to grow Everything connoting individualistic human lab- our brought to a culminating conclusion, as if a great signpost was put to say 'IT is FINISHED.' "I have seen nothing like it. "In Flanders and the North of France every square foot of land is brought into cultivation. There is no room for hedges, no room for trees only on to the roadside to provide tethering posts for the goats who nibble the weeds on the