Chapter 2

But on balance you win. For if ever there was a place where soul and
body rotted more rapidly and more completely I have yet to find it. That
beautiful island, a queen even amongst the glories of the South Seas,
contained more vice to the square mile than did ever the slums of a
great city. For in any city there is always work to be done; through a
portion of the twenty-four hours at least, the human flotsam are given
in labour. But in Tampico there was no work to be done, save by the very
few who came for a space on business and departed in due course.

In Tampico, where fruit and enough food could be had for the asking,
there was no struggle to survive. In fact, no one ever struggled in
Tampico save for one thing–drink. Drink could not be had for the
asking. Drink had to be paid for in hard cash. And hard cash was not
plentiful amongst the derelicts who came to that island, and having come
remained till death took them, and another false name was written
roughly on a wooden cross to mark the event. Wood is cheap in Tampico,
which is why the tombstones in the graveyard of the lost are monotonous
to look at. After all, who could be expected to put up the price of a
perfectly good bottle of gin in order to erect some fool ornamental
stone on the grave of a man who had died of delirium tremens?

It was out of the beaten track of the big liners by many hundred miles:
only small boats ever called–boats principally engaged in the fruit
trade, with passenger accommodation for six in the first class. For
fruit was the particular trade of Tampico; fruit and various tropical
products which grew so richly to hand that it was almost unnecessary to
pick them. If you waited long enough they fell into your hands. And
nobody ever did anything but wait in Tampico, which is why it is so
utterly rotten. Even when a lump of ambergris comes ashore–fat and
stinking and an Event with a capital E–the fortunate finder does not
hurry. True, he may knife the man who tries to steal it, but otherwise
his movements are placid. There is a dealer in the town, and ambergris
means drink for weeks, or maybe days, according to the capacity for
liquid of the finder. The scent upon your dressing-table, my lady, has
ambergris in it, though the whale which supplied it is dead, and the man
who found it is dead too.

The first time I saw Raymond Blair he had just found a lump of the stuff
and was, in consequence, utterly and supremely happy. I’d heard about
him from MacAndrew the trader, and I watched him with the pitiful
interest a sound man always feels for the down and outer.

“The most hopeless case of all,” MacAndrew had said to me in the club
the night before. “A brilliantly educated man–Balliol–he told me one
evening just before he got insensible. He’ll spout classics at you by
the yard, and if he’s in good form–not more than one bottle inside
him–he’ll keep a dinner-table in roars of laughter.”

“He belongs to the club,” I said in some surprise.

MacAndrew shrugged his shoulders.

“It’s easier to belong to our club here than the Bachelors’ in London.
He’s got money, you see–quite a bit of money. Comes out every month.
And he’s educated–a gentleman. And he’s a drunkard. Hopeless, helpless,
unredeemable.” He filled his pipe thoughtfully. “And though it’s a
strange thing to say, it’s better to keep him drunk. It’s all that keeps
what little manhood is left in him alive. When he’s sober he’s dreadful.

“Towards the end of the month always, before the money comes–he isn’t a
man, he’s a crawling, hideous thing. Anything, literally anything will
he do to get drink. And there’s a Dago swine here who torments him. He
loathes him because one night Blair–who was drunk and therefore in good
form–put it across the Dago in a battle of words, so that the whole
club roared with laughter. And the Dago gets his revenge that way. Why,
I’ve seen him, when Blair has been crawling on the floor–and that’s not
a figure of speech, mark you, I mean it–crawling on the floor for the
price of a drink, make him stand up on a table and recite “Humpty
Dumpty,” and other nursery rhymes, and then give him a few coppers at
the end as a reward. And he’s Balliol.”

“But can’t anything be done?” I asked.

MacAndrew had laughed a little sadly.

“When you’ve been here a little longer, you won’t ask that question.”

I was sitting in the window of the club as Raymond Blair came in, and we
had the room to ourselves. He had been pointed out to me a few days
previously, but he had then been far too drunk to recognise anybody, and
from the look he gave me as he crossed the room it was evident that he
regarded me as a stranger. I took no notice of him, and after a while he
came over and drew up a chair.

“A stranger I think, sir, to our island?”

His voice was cultivated, and he spoke with the faintest suspicion of a
drawl.

“I arrived about a week ago,” I answered a little abruptly. Somehow or
other the thought of this English gentleman standing on a table reciting
nursery rhymes at the command of a Dago stuck in my throat. It seemed so
utterly despicable, and yet–poor devil, who was I to judge?

“And are you staying long?”

“Probably a month,” I said. “It depends.”

He nodded portentously, and it was then that I saw he was already drunk.

“A charming island,” he remarked, and his hand went out to the
bell-push. “We must really have a drink to celebrate your first visit.”

“Thank you–not for me!” I answered briefly, and he gave a gentle,
tolerant smile.

“As you like,” he remarked, with a wave of his hand. “Most new arrivals
refuse to drink with me, in a well-meant endeavour to save me from
myself. But I’m glad to say it’s quite useless–I passed that stage long
ago. Such a fatiguing stage, too, when one is struggling uselessly. Far
better to drift, my dear sir, far better.”

He took a long gulp of the double whisky and soda which the native
waiter, without even asking for orders, had placed beside him.

“I am only myself now,” he continued gravely, “when I am drunk. I am
supplied regularly with money from–er–a business source at home, and I
am thereby enabled to be myself with comparative frequency.”

It was then, I think, that I realised what an utterly hopeless case he
was, but I said nothing and let him ramble on.