His size and strength saved him from the worst. He dealt with two youths who came at him with razor blades in a way that gave them cause to regret for many months that they had attacked him. But the others got him down and kicked him ruthlessly with their heavy boots until some sailors who were in the pub came to his rescue. He was still conscious and had succeeded on protecting his face and head; but his body was black and blue, two of his ribs were cracked and his right knee cap so badly bashed that water on the knee resulted. For over a fortnight he was in hospital and before he was discharged he received another anonymous note
`You got off lightly. Next time we'll do you proper. Get out of So'ton or else…'
During his vivid dreams when he lived the life of a Viking, Adam was a great fighter. Whirling aloft his mighty double edged sword, he hewed his way with ferocious delight through groups of long haired, skin clad semi savages striving to protect the coastal villages of Scotland and Ireland, or the better clad but less warlike peasants of Romanized England. But he regarded these far memories as almost a form of fiction in which he was not responsible for the part he played, any more than a mild mannered modern author who creates a ruthless secret agent. In his present personality he had inherited the gentle nature of his mother and abhorred all forms of violence. Occasionally his quick temper caused him to snap the heads off people who annoyed him, and once he had knocked down a fellow reporter; but he realised that his great strength could be dangerous and gradually learned to keep his temper under better control.
To be attacked by a gang was a different matter and he had the natural dislike of most men to exposing himself to injury if it could be avoided. So he `went to his editor and said
`This isn't good enough. I'm not prepared to remain here as a sitting duck for these young swine.' Then he handed in his resignation.
The editor endeavoured to persuade him to stay on in some other capacity, but he replied. `No. They wouldn't know that I've ceased to be a crime reporter, and I like my face. So I'm quitting.'
While in hospital, his dreams had become more frequent and had all been of Mexico; so he was now eager to spend even a short time in that country. To go there as a passenger was far beyond his means, but he decided to work his way there and made the rounds of the shipping offices. His time in the Navy qualified him to go as a seaman; but he knew that would mean a rough life in the fo’c’sle and hoped, as an educated man, to get something better.
His enquiries were at first disappointing, as he found that no lines sailed direct from Southampton to Mexico. Then after a while he was offered a post as supercargo in a tramp that was sailing to Lisbon, the Canaries, Buenos Aires, then up to Rio, Recife, Caracas, Kingston Jamaica, Vera Cruz and New Orleans. The pay was modest and the ship shortly due to sail, so it was agreed that he should sign on only as far as Vera Cruz. From there he could pay his rail fare up to Mexico City and have enough money over to live modestly in the capital for a few weeks, or stay on longer if he could find a job. Two days later he had taken over the ship's manifest and was on his way.
The voyage proved a pleasant change; the ship's officers were a tough lot but friendly, and his duties of superintending the unloading and reloading of cargo in the ports light. In preparation for his stay in Mexico he had made up his mind to learn Spanish; so he had taken with him a small tape recorder with a set of Spanish teaching tapes, a Spanish grammar, a Spanish English dictionary and copies of a novel by Ibanez in both English and Spanish. While at sea he was virtually a passenger; so he was able to spend many hours each day with his records and books, and by the time the ship reached Recife was confident that he knew enough of the language to converse on simple matters.
But at Recife, in Brazil, again the hammer of Fate fell. On going ashore the Captain was informed by the Company's agents that it had gone bankrupt. There was not even enough money to pay off the ship's company. Adam was left stranded, with only a little over fifty pounds in cash, no job and thousands of miles from either Mexico or home.
His weeks in Recife were some of the worst Adam had ever experienced. The shoddy port lies only eight degrees south of the equator. The moist heat is so terrible that a clean shirt is soaked with perspiration within a few minutes. People habitually carry towels with which to mop the sweat from their faces. The town is dreary beyond belief, its inhabitants Indians, the better off having a dash of Portuguese blood, the majority ragged, dirty and half starving. After a week there Adam would willingly have signed on as a seaman in any ship bound for Mexico or England, to get away, but the agents had said that funds to pay off the ship's company were being sent out, he had ten weeks' wages owing to him and he was loath to forgo the best part of two hundred pounds; so he stayed on.
Meanwhile, he lived uncomfortably in a squalid seamen's hostel, eking out his own money. That due from the Company still failed to arrive and, as time went on, he had to look at every cruzeiro twice.
He was near despair when one day he came upon an English newspaper. In it there was a review of Across the Green Seas, and it predicted a great success for the book. Realising that now his book had been published, he was due for the advance royalty on it, Adam used a good part of his remaining funds to send a cable to his publisher.
A week later an airmail letter reached him. The book was selling splendidly. To take advantage of its success it should be followed up with another next spring, so it was hoped that he had one well on the way to completion. His presence in England could be helpful in getting his name established. Money had been cabled to his credit at the American Express and he was urged to return home as soon as possible.
Overjoyed at this good news, Adam promptly moved to more comfortable quarters and booked a passage on a ship that was sailing for Liverpool the following week. Now he cursed himself for not having foreseen that, on the chance that his first book would do well, he ought to have another ready to send in; and for all the wasted hours he might have been working on it, instead of devoting his time to learning Spanish, then sitting about miserably in Recife.
Filled with enthusiasm, he went to work at once and roughed out a plot. It was based on his recent voyage and a love affair between a fictional First Mate in a ship and a young Brazilian girl passenger who was heiress to millions.
By the time he sailed he had written two chapters, and on the voyage over he wrote a further six. Well before he arrived in England he had decided there was no point in his returning either to Scotland or Southampton, so he would live in London. When he arrived there the rents appalled him, but he settled for a bed sitter, bathroom and kitchenette, which he felt he could afford, in Wandsworth. Then, living on eggs, tinned food and frequent brews of tea, he renewed his literary labours, working twelve hours a day.
Soon after his return he was taken to lunch by his publisher, an elderly gentleman with a benign countenance but cynical turn of mind, named Winters. From Mr. Winters, Adam learned the hard facts of authorship as a career. It was the worst paid of all professions. He must not be misled by the incomes made by such writers as Agatha Christie, Somerset Maugham, Dennis Wheatley, Ian Fleming, J. B. Priestley, A. J. Cronin, Howard Spring and a few others of that kind. They could be counted on the fingers of two hands. Over eighty new novels were published every week. Many of them had entailed two or three years' work but earned their authors only a few hundred pounds, because ninety per cent of their sales were to libraries, which meant that they received about two shillings' royalty on a book that would be read by scores of people.
There was also the matter of `build up'. However successful a first novel might be, unless it were filmed it would bring its author less than a leading barrister received for one case, or a Harley Street surgeon for two or three private operations. It was not until an author was established with eight or ten well received books behind him, and a reasonable assurance that they would continue to be reprinted as paperbacks, that he could count on an income on the level of that of a bank manager in a not particularly rich suburban area.