THE NIGGER of THE NARCISSUS
A TALE OF THE FORECASTLE
BY JOSEPH CONRAD
COPYRIGHT, 1897, 1914,
BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
TO
EDWARD GARNETT
THIS TALE
ABOUT MY FRIENDS
OF THE SEA
TO MY READERS IN AMERICA
From that evening when James Wait joined the ship—late for the muster
of the crew—to the moment when he left us in the open sea, shrouded in
sailcloth, through the open port, I had much to do with him. He was in
my watch. A negro in a British forecastle is a lonely being. He has no
chums. Yet James Wait, afraid of death and making her his accomplice
was an impostor of some character—mastering our compassion, scornful of
our sentimentalism, triumphing over our suspicions.
But in the book he is nothing; he is merely the centre of the ship’s
collective psychology and the pivot of the action. Yet he, who in the
family circle and amongst my friends is familiarly referred to as the
Nigger, remains very precious to me. For the book written round him
is not the sort of thing that can be attempted more than once in a
life-time. It is the book by which, not as a novelist perhaps, but as
an artist striving for the utmost sincerity of expression, I am willing
to stand or fall. Its pages are the tribute of my unalterable and
profound affection for the ships, the seamen, the winds and the great
sea—the moulders of my youth, the companions of the best years of my
life.
After writing the last words of that book, in the revulsion of feeling
before the accomplished task, I understood that I had done with the
sea, and that henceforth I had to be a writer. And almost without
laying down the pen I wrote a preface, trying to express the spirit
in which I was entering on the task of my new life. That preface on
advice (which I now think was wrong) was never published with the book.
But the late W. E. Henley, who had the courage at that time (1897) to
serialize my “Nigger” in the New Review judged it worthy to be printed
as an afterword at the end of the last instalment of the tale.
I am glad that this book which means so much to me is coming out again,
under its proper title of “The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’” and under the
auspices of my good friends and publishers Messrs. Doubleday, Page &
Co. into the light of publicity.
Half the span of a generation has passed since W. E. Henley, after
reading two chapters, sent me a verbal message: “Tell Conrad that if
the rest is up to the sample it shall certainly come out in the New
Review.” The most gratifying recollection of my writer’s life!
And here is the Suppressed Preface.
1914.
JOSEPH CONRAD.
Contents
PREFACE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
PREFACE
A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should
carry its justification in every line. And art itself may be defined as
a single-minded attempt to render the highest kind of justice to the
visible universe, by bringing to light the truth, manifold and one,
underlying its every aspect. It is an attempt to find in its forms, in
its colours, in its light, in its shadows, in the aspects of matter
and in the facts of life what of each is fundamental, what is enduring
and essential—their one illuminating and convincing quality—the very
truth of their existence. The artist, then, like the thinker or the
scientist, seeks the truth and makes his appeal. Impressed by the
aspect of the world the thinker plunges into ideas, the scientist
into facts—whence, presently, emerging they make their appeal to
those qualities of our being that fit us best for the hazardous
enterprise of living. They speak authoritatively to our common-sense,
to our intelligence, to our desire of peace or to our desire of
unrest; not seldom to our prejudices, sometimes to our fears, often
to our egoism—but always to our credulity. And their words are heard
with reverence, for their concern is with weighty matters: with the
cultivation of our minds and the proper care of our bodies, with the
attainment of our ambitions, with the perfection of the means and the
glorification of our precious aims.
It is otherwise with the artist.
Confronted by the same enigmatical spectacle the artist descends within
himself, and in that lonely region of stress and strife, if he be
deserving and fortunate, he finds the terms of his appeal. His appeal
is made to our less obvious capacities: to that part of our nature
which, because of the warlike conditions of existence, is necessarily
kept out of sight within the more resisting and hard qualities—like the
vulnerable body within a steel armour. His appeal is less loud, more
profound, less distinct, more stirring—and sooner forgotten. Yet its
effect endures forever. The changing wisdom of successive generations
discards ideas, questions facts, demolishes theories. But the artist
appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to
that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition—and, therefore, more
permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder,
to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity,
and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all
creation—and to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity that
knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts, to the solidarity
in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope,
in fear, which binds men to each other, which binds together all
humanity—the dead to the living and the living to the unborn.
It is only some such train of thought, or rather of feeling, that can
in a measure explain the aim of the attempt, made in the tale which
follows, to present an unrestful episode in the obscure lives of a few
individuals out of all the disregarded multitude of the bewildered,
the simple and the voiceless. For, if any part of truth dwells in the
belief confessed above, it becomes evident that there is not a place
of splendour or a dark corner of the earth that does not deserve,
if only a passing glance of wonder and pity. The motive then, may
be held to justify the matter of the work; but this preface, which
is simply an avowal of endeavour, cannot end here—for the avowal is
not yet complete. Fiction—if it at all aspires to be art—appeals to
temperament. And in truth it must be, like painting, like music, like
all art, the appeal of one temperament to all the other innumerable
temperaments whose subtle and resistless power endows passing events
with their true meaning, and creates the moral, the emotional
atmosphere of the place and time. Such an appeal to be effective must
be an impression conveyed through the senses; and, in fact, it cannot
be made in any other way, because temperament, whether individual or
collective, is not amenable to persuasion. All art, therefore, appeals
primarily to the senses, and the artistic aim when expressing itself
in written words must also make its appeal through the senses, if its
highest desire is to reach the secret spring of responsive emotions.
It must strenuously aspire to the plasticity of sculpture, to the
colour of painting, and to the magic suggestiveness of music—which is
the art of arts. And it is only through complete, unswerving devotion
to the perfect blending of form and substance; it is only through an
unremitting never-discouraged care for the shape and ring of sentences
that an approach can be made to plasticity, to colour, and that the
light of magic suggestiveness may be brought to play for an evanescent
instant over the commonplace surface of words: of the old, old words,
worn thin, defaced by ages of careless usage.
The sincere endeavour to accomplish that creative task, to go as far
on that road as his strength will carry him, to go undeterred by
faltering, weariness or reproach, is the only valid justification
for the worker in prose. And if his conscience is clear, his answer
to those who in the fulness of a wisdom which looks for immediate
profit, demand specifically to be edified, consoled, amused; who demand
to be promptly improved, or encouraged, or frightened, or shocked,
or charmed, must run thus:—My task which I am trying to achieve
is, by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you
feel—it is, before all, to make you see. That—and no more, and it
is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your
deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm—all you demand—and,
perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to
ask. To snatch in a moment of courage, from the remorseless rush of
time, a passing phase of life, is only the beginning of the task. The
task approached in tenderness and faith is to hold up unquestioningly,
without choice and without fear, the rescued fragment before all eyes
in the light of a sincere mood. It is to show its vibration, its
colour, its form; and through its movement, its form, and its colour,
reveal the substance of its truth—disclose its inspiring secret: the
stress and passion within the core of each convincing moment. In a
single-minded attempt of that kind, if one be deserving and fortunate,
one may perchance attain to such clearness of sincerity that at last
the presented vision of regret or pity, of terror or mirth, shall
awaken in the hearts of the beholders that feeling of unavoidable
solidarity; of the solidarity in mysterious origin, in toil, in joy, in
hope, in uncertain fate, which binds men to each other and all mankind
to the visible world. It is evident that he who, rightly or wrongly,
holds by the convictions expressed above cannot be faithful to any one
of the temporary formulas of his craft. The enduring part of them—the
truth which each only imperfectly veils—should abide with him as the
most precious of his possessions, but they all: Realism, Romanticism,
Naturalism, even the unofficial sentimentalism (which like the poor,
is exceedingly difficult to get rid of), all these gods must, after a
short period of fellowship, abandon him—even on the very threshold of
the temple—to the stammerings of his conscience and to the outspoken
consciousness of the difficulties of his work. In that uneasy solitude
the supreme cry of Art for Art itself, loses the exciting ring of its
apparent immorality. It sounds far off. It has ceased to be a cry, and
is heard only as a whisper, often incomprehensible, but at times and
faintly encouraging.
Sometimes, stretched at ease in the shade of a roadside tree, we watch
the motions of a labourer in a distant field, and after a time, begin
to wonder languidly as to what the fellow may be at. We watch the
movements of his body, the waving of his arms, we see him bend down,
stand up, hesitate, begin again. It may add to the charm of an idle
hour to be told the purpose of his exertions. If we know he is trying
to lift a stone, to dig a ditch, to uproot a stump, we look with a more
real interest at his efforts; we are disposed to condone the jar of
his agitation upon the restfulness of the landscape; and even, if in a
brotherly frame of mind, we may bring ourselves to forgive his failure.
We understood his object, and, after all, the fellow has tried, and
perhaps he had not the strength—and perhaps he had not the knowledge.
We forgive, go on our way—and forget.
And so it is with the workman of art. Art is long and life is short,
and success is very far off. And thus, doubtful of strength to travel
so far, we talk a little about the aim—the aim of art, which, like life
itself, is inspiring, difficult—obscured by mists; it is not in the
clear logic of a triumphant conclusion; it is not in the unveiling of
one of those heartless secrets which are called the Laws of Nature. It
is not less great, but only more difficult.
To arrest, for the space of a breath, the hands busy about the work
of the earth, and compel men entranced by the sight of distant goals
to glance for a moment at the surrounding vision of form and colour,
of sunshine and shadows; to make them pause for a look, for a sigh,
for a smile—such is the aim, difficult and evanescent, and reserved
only for a very few to achieve. But sometimes, by the deserving
and the fortunate, even that task is accomplished. And when it is
accomplished—behold!—all the truth of life is there: a moment of
vision, a sigh, a smile—and the return to an eternal rest.
1897. J. C.
THE NIGGER OF THE “NARCISSUS”
CHAPTER ONE
Mr. Baker, chief mate of the ship Narcissus, stepped in one stride
out of his lighted cabin into the darkness of the quarter-deck. Above
his head, on the break of the poop, the night-watchman rang a double
stroke. It was nine o’clock. Mr. Baker, speaking up to the man above
him, asked:—“Are all the hands aboard, Knowles?”
The man limped down the ladder, then said reflectively:—
“I think so, sir. All our old chaps are there, and a lot of new men has
come.... They must be all there.”
“Tell the boatswain to send all hands aft,” went on Mr. Baker; “and
tell one of the youngsters to bring a good lamp here. I want to muster
our crowd.”
The main deck was dark aft, but halfway from forward, through the
open doors of the forecastle, two streaks of brilliant light cut the
shadow of the quiet night that lay upon the ship. A hum of voices was
heard there, while port and starboard, in the illuminated doorways,
silhouettes of moving men appeared for a moment, very black, without
relief, like figures cut out of sheet tin. The ship was ready for
sea. The carpenter had driven in the last wedge of the mainhatch
battens, and, throwing down his maul, had wiped his face with great
deliberation, just on the stroke of five. The decks had been swept,
the windlass oiled and made ready to heave up the anchor; the big
tow-rope lay in long bights along one side of the main deck, with
one end carried up and hung over the bows, in readiness for the tug
that would come paddling and hissing noisily, hot and smoky, in the
limpid, cool quietness of the early morning. The captain was ashore,
where he had been engaging some new hands to make up his full crew;
and, the work of the day over, the ship’s officers had kept out of
the way, glad of a little breathing-time. Soon after dark the few
liberty-men and the new hands began to arrive in shore-boats rowed by
white-clad Asiatics, who clamoured fiercely for payment before coming
alongside the gangway-ladder. The feverish and shrill babble of Eastern
language struggled against the masterful tones of tipsy seamen, who
argued against brazen claims and dishonest hopes by profane shouts.
The resplendent and bestarred peace of the East was torn into squalid
tatters by howls of rage and shrieks of lament raised over sums ranging
from five annas to half a rupee; and every soul afloat in Bombay
Harbour became aware that the new hands were joining the Narcissus.
Gradually the distracting noise had subsided. The boats came no
longer in splashing clusters of three or four together, but dropped
alongside singly, in a subdued buzz of expostulation cut short by a
“Not a pace more! You go to the devil!” from some man staggering up
the accommodation-ladder—a dark figure, with a long bag poised on the
shoulder. In the forecastle the newcomers, upright and swaying amongst
corded boxes and bundles of bedding, made friends with the old hands,
who sat one above another in the two tiers of bunks, gazing at their
future shipmates with glances critical but friendly. The two forecastle
lamps were turned up high, and shed an intense hard glare; shore-going
round hats were pushed far on the backs of heads, or rolled about on
the deck amongst the chain-cables; white collars, undone, stuck out on
each side of red faces; big arms in white sleeves gesticulated; the
growling voices hummed steady amongst bursts of laughter and hoarse
calls. “Here, sonny, take that bunk!... Don’t you do it!... What’s
your last ship?... I know her.... Three years ago, in Puget Sound....
This here berth leaks, I tell you!... Come on; give us a chance to
swing that chest!... Did you bring a bottle, any of you shore toffs?...
Give us a bit of ’baccy.... I know her; her skipper drank himself to
death.... He was a dandy boy!... Liked his lotion inside, he did!...
No!... Hold your row, you chaps!... I tell you, you came on board a
hooker, where they get their money’s worth out of poor Jack, by—!...”
A little fellow, called Craik and nicknamed Belfast, abused the ship
violently, romancing on principle, just to give the new hands something
to think over. Archie, sitting aslant on his sea-chest, kept his
knees out of the way, and pushed the needle steadily through a white
patch in a pair of blue trousers. Men in black jackets and stand-up
collars, mixed with men bare-footed, bare-armed, with coloured shirts
open on hairy chests, pushed against one another in the middle of the
forecastle. The group swayed, reeled, turning upon itself with the
motion of a scrimmage, in a haze of tobacco smoke. All were speaking
together, swearing at every second word. A Russian Finn, wearing a
yellow shirt with pink stripes, stared upwards, dreamy-eyed, from under
a mop of tumbled hair. Two young giants with smooth, baby faces—two
Scandinavians—helped each other to spread their bedding, silent, and
smiling placidly at the tempest of good-humoured and meaningless
curses. Old Singleton, the oldest able seaman in the ship, sat apart
on the deck right under the lamps, stripped to the waist, tattooed
like a cannibal chief all over his powerful chest and enormous biceps.
Between the blue and red patterns his white skin gleamed like satin;
his bare back was propped against the heel of the bowsprit, and he
held a book at arm’s length before his big, sunburnt face. With his
spectacles and a venerable white beard, he resembled a learned and
savage patriarch, the incarnation of barbarian wisdom serene in the
blasphemous turmoil of the world. He was intensely absorbed, and as
he turned the pages an expression of grave surprise would pass over
his rugged features. He was reading “Pelham.” The popularity of Bulwer
Lytton in the forecastles of Southern-going ships is a wonderful
and bizarre phenomenon. What ideas do his polished and so curiously
insincere sentences awaken in the simple minds of the big children who
people those dark and wandering places of the earth? What meaning can
their rough, inexperienced souls find in the elegant verbiage of his
pages? What excitement?—what forgetfulness?—what appeasement? Mystery!
Is it the fascination of the incomprehensible?—is it the charm of the
impossible? Or are those beings who exist beyond the pale of life
stirred by his tales as by an enigmatical disclosure of a resplendent
world that exists within the frontier of infamy and filth, within that
border of dirt and hunger, of misery and dissipation, that comes down
on all sides to the water’s edge of the incorruptible ocean, and is the
only thing they know of life, the only thing they see of surrounding
land—those life-long prisoners of the sea? Mystery! Singleton, who
had sailed to the southward since the age of twelve, who in the last
forty-five years had lived (as we had calculated from his papers) no
more than forty months ashore—old Singleton, who boasted, with the
mild composure of long years well spent, that generally from the day
he was paid off from one ship till the day he shipped in another he
seldom was in a condition to distinguish daylight—old Singleton sat
unmoved in the clash of voices and cries, spelling through “Pelham”
with slow labour, and lost in an absorption profound enough to resemble
a trance. He breathed regularly. Every time he turned the book in his
enormous and blackened hands the muscles of his big white arms rolled
slightly under the smooth skin. Hidden by the white moustache, his
lips, stained with tobacco-juice that trickled down the long beard,
moved in inward whisper. His bleared eyes gazed fixedly from behind the
glitter of black-rimmed glasses. Opposite to him, and on a level with
his face, the ship’s cat sat on the barrel of the windlass in the pose
of a crouching chimera, blinking its green eyes at its old friend. It
seemed to meditate a leap on to the old man’s lap over the bent back
of the ordinary seaman who sat at Singleton’s feet. Young Charley was
lean and long-necked. The ridge of his backbone made a chain of small
hills under the old shirt. His face of a street-boy—a face precocious,
sagacious, and ironic, with deep downward folds on each side of the
thin, wide mouth—hung low over his bony knees. He was learning to make
a lanyard knot with a bit of an old rope. Small drops of perspiration
stood out on his bulging forehead; he sniffed strongly from time to
time, glancing out of the corners of his restless eyes at the old
seaman, who took no notice of the puzzled youngster muttering at his
work.
The noise increased. Little Belfast seemed, in the heavy heat of the
forecastle, to boil with facetious fury. His eyes danced; in the
crimson of his face, comical as a mask, the mouth yawned black, with
strange grimaces. Facing him, a half-undressed man held his sides, and,
throwing his head back, laughed with wet eyelashes. Others stared with
amazed eyes. Men sitting doubled up in the upper bunks smoked short
pipes, swinging bare brown feet above the heads of those who, sprawling
below on sea-chests, listened, smiling stupidly or scornfully. Over
the white rims of berths stuck out heads with blinking eyes; but the
bodies were lost in the gloom of those places, that resembled narrow
niches for coffins in a whitewashed and lighted mortuary. Voices
buzzed louder. Archie, with compressed lips, drew himself in, seemed
to shrink into a smaller space, and sewed steadily, industrious and
dumb. Belfast shrieked like an inspired Dervish:—“... So I seez to him,
boys, seez I, ‘Beggin’ yer pardon, sorr,’ seez I to that second mate
of that steamer—‘beggin’ your-r-r pardon, sorr, the Board of Trade
must ’ave been drunk when they granted you your certificate!’ ‘What do
you say, you—!’ seez he, comin’ at me like a mad bull ... all in his
white clothes; and I up with my tar-pot and capsizes it all over his
blamed lovely face and his lovely jacket.... ‘Take that!’ seez I. ‘I
am a sailor, anyhow, you nosing, skipper-licking, useless, sooperfloos
bridge-stanchion, you! That’s the kind of man I am!’ shouts I.... You
should have seed him skip, boys! Drowned, blind with tar, he was! So...”
“Don’t ’ee believe him! He never upset no tar; I was there!” shouted
somebody. The two Norwegians sat on a chest side by side, alike and
placid, resembling a pair of love-birds on a perch, and with round eyes
stared innocently; but the Russian Finn, in the racket of explosive
shouts and rolling laughter, remained motionless, limp and dull, like
a deaf man without a backbone. Near him Archie smiled at his needle. A
broad-chested, slow-eyed newcomer spoke deliberately to Belfast during
an exhausted lull in the noise:—“I wonder any of the mates here are
alive yet with such a chap as you on board! I concloode they ain’t that
bad now, if you had the taming of them, sonny.”
“Not bad! Not bad!” screamed Belfast. “If it wasn’t for us sticking
together.... Not bad! They ain’t never bad when they ain’t got a
chawnce, blast their black ’arts....” He foamed, whirling his arms,
then suddenly grinned and, taking a tablet of black tobacco out of his
pocket, bit a piece off with a funny show of ferocity. Another new
hand—a man with shifty eyes and a yellow hatchet face, who had been
listening open-mouthed in the shadow of the midship locker—observed
in a squeaky voice:—“Well, it’s a ’omeward trip, anyhow. Bad or good,
I can do it on my ’ed—s’long as I get ’ome. And I can look after my
rights! I will show ’em!” All the heads turned towards him. Only
the ordinary seaman and the cat took no notice. He stood with arms
akimbo, a little fellow with white eyelashes. He looked as if he had
known all the degradations and all the furies. He looked as if he
had been cuffed, kicked, rolled in the mud; he looked as if he had
been scratched, spat upon, pelted with unmentionable filth ... and he
smiled with a sense of security at the faces around. His ears were
bending down under the weight of his battered felt hat. The torn tails
of his black coat flapped in fringes about the calves of his legs. He
unbuttoned the only two buttons that remained and every one saw that
he had no shirt under it. It was his deserved misfortune that those
rags which nobody could possibly be supposed to own looked on him as
if they had been stolen. His neck was long and thin; his eyelids were
red; rare hairs hung about his jaws; his shoulders were peaked and
drooped like the broken wings of a bird; all his left side was caked
with mud which showed that he had lately slept in a wet ditch. He had
saved his inefficient carcass from violent destruction by running
away from an American ship where, in a moment of forgetful folly, he
had dared to engage himself; and he had knocked about for a fortnight
ashore in the native quarter, cadging for drinks, starving, sleeping on
rubbish-heaps, wandering in sunshine: a startling visitor from a world
of nightmares. He stood repulsive and smiling in the sudden silence.
This clean white forecastle was his refuge; the place where he could be
lazy; where he could wallow, and lie and eat—and curse the food he ate;
where he could display his talents for shirking work, for cheating, for
cadging; where he could find surely some one to wheedle and some one
to bully—and where he would be paid for doing all this. They all knew
him. Is there a spot on earth where such a man is unknown, an ominous
survival testifying to the eternal fitness of lies and impudence? A
taciturn long-armed shellback, with hooked fingers, who had been lying
on his back smoking, turned in his bed to examine him dispassionately,
then, over his head, sent a long jet of clear saliva towards the door.
They all knew him! He was the man that cannot steer, that cannot
splice, that dodges the work on dark nights; that, aloft, holds on
frantically with both arms and legs, and swears at the wind, the sleet,
the darkness; the man who curses the sea while others work. The man who
is the last out and the first in when all hands are called. The man who
can’t do most things and won’t do the rest. The pet of philanthropists
and self-seeking landlubbers. The sympathetic and deserving creature
that knows all about his rights, but knows nothing of courage, of
endurance, and of the unexpressed faith, of the unspoken loyalty that
knits together a ship’s company. The independent offspring of the
ignoble freedom of the slums full of disdain and hate for the austere
servitude of the sea.
Some one cried at him: “What’s your name?”—“Donkin,” he said, looking
round with cheerful effrontery.—“What are you?” asked another
voice.—“Why, a sailor like you, old man,” he replied, in a tone that
meant to be hearty but was impudent.—“Blamme if you don’t look a blamed
sight worse than a broken-down fireman,” was the comment in a convinced
mutter. Charley lifted his head and piped in a cheeky voice: “He is a
man and a sailor”—then wiping his nose with the back of his hand bent
down industriously over his bit of rope. A few laughed. Others stared
doubtfully. The ragged newcomer was indignant—“That’s a fine way to
welcome a chap into a fo’c’sle,” he snarled. “Are you men or a lot of
’artless canny-bals?”—“Don’t take your shirt off for a word, shipmate,”
called out Belfast, jumping up in front, fiery, menacing, and friendly
at the same time.—“Is that ’ere bloke blind?” asked the indomitable
scarecrow, looking right and left with affected surprise. “Can’t ’ee
see I ’aven’t got no shirt?”
He held both his arms out crosswise and shook the rags that hung over
his bones with dramatic effect.
“’Cos why?” he continued very loud. “The bloody Yankees been tryin’ to
jump my guts out ’cos I stood up for my rights like a good ’un. I am an
Englishman, I am. They set upon me an’ I ’ad to run. That’s why. A’n’t
yer never seed a man ’ard up? Yah! What kind of blamed ship is this?
I’m dead broke. I ’aven’t got nothink. No bag, no bed, no blanket, no
shirt—not a bloomin’ rag but what I stand in. But I ’ad the ’art to
stand up agin’ them Yankees. ’As any of you ’art enough to spare a pair
of old pants for a chum?”
He knew how to conquer the naïve instincts of that crowd. In a moment
they gave him their compassion, jocularly, contemptuously, or surlily;
and at first it took the shape of a blanket thrown at him as he stood
there with the white skin of his limbs showing his human kinship
through the black fantasy of his rags. Then a pair of old shoes fell
at his muddy feet. With a cry:—“From under,” a rolled-up pair of
canvas trousers, heavy with tar stains, struck him on the shoulder.
The gust of their benevolence sent a wave of sentimental pity through
their doubting hearts. They were touched by their own readiness to
alleviate a shipmate’s misery. Voices cried:—“We will fit you out,
old man.” Murmurs: “Never seed seech a hard case.... Poor beggar....
I’ve got an old singlet.... Will that be of any use to you?... Take
it, matey....” Those friendly murmurs filled the forecastle. He pawed
around with his naked foot, gathering the things in a heap and looked
about for more. Unemotional Archie perfunctorily contributed to the
pile an old cloth cap with the peak torn off. Old Singleton, lost in
the serene regions of fiction, read on unheeding. Charley, pitiless
with the wisdom of youth, squeaked:—“If you want brass buttons for your
new unyforms I’ve got two for you.” The filthy object of universal
charity shook his fist at the youngster.—“I’ll make you keep this ’ere
fo’c’sle clean, young feller,” he snarled viciously. “Never you fear.
I will learn you to be civil to an able seaman, you ignerant ass.” He
glared harmfully, but saw Singleton shut his book, and his little beady
eyes began to roam from berth to berth.—“Take that bunk by the door
there—it’s pretty fair,” suggested Belfast. So advised, he gathered the
gifts at his feet, pressed them in a bundle against his breast, then
looked cautiously at the Russian Finn, who stood on one side with an
unconscious gaze, contemplating, perhaps, one of those weird visions
that haunt the men of his race.—“Get out of my road, Dutchy,” said the
victim of Yankee brutality. The Finn did not move—did not hear. “Get
out, blast ye,” shouted the other, shoving him aside with his elbow.
“Get out, you blanked deaf and dumb fool. Get out.” The man staggered,
recovered himself, and gazed at the speaker in silence.—“Those damned
furriners should be kept under,” opined the amiable Donkin to the
forecastle. “If you don’t teach ’em their place they put on you
like anythink.” He flung all his worldly possessions into the empty
bed-place, gauged with another shrewd look the risks of the proceeding,
then leaped up to the Finn, who stood pensive and dull.—“I’ll teach
you to swell around,” he yelled. “I’ll plug your eyes for you, you
blooming square-head.” Most of the men were now in their bunks and the
two had the forecastle clear to themselves. The development of the
destitute Donkin aroused interest. He danced all in tatters before
the amazed Finn, squaring from a distance at the heavy, unmoved face.
One or two men cried encouragingly: “Go it, Whitechapel!” settling
themselves luxuriously in their beds to survey the fight. Others
shouted: “Shut yer row!... Go an’ put yer ’ed in a bag!...” The hubbub
was recommencing. Suddenly many heavy blows struck with a handspike
on the deck above boomed like discharges of small cannon through the
forecastle. Then the boatswain’s voice rose outside the door with an
authoritative note in its drawl:—“D’ye hear, below there? Lay aft! Lay
aft to muster all hands!”
There was a moment of surprised stillness. Then the forecastle floor
disappeared under men whose bare feet flopped on the planks as they
sprang clear out of their berths. Caps were rooted for amongst tumbled
blankets. Some, yawning, buttoned waistbands. Half-smoked pipes were
knocked hurriedly against woodwork and stuffed under pillows. Voices
growled:—“What’s up?... Is there no rest for us?” Donkin yelped:—“If
that’s the way of this ship, we’ll ’ave to change all that.... You
leave me alone.... I will soon....” None of the crowd noticed him.
They were lurching in twos and threes through the doors, after the
manner of merchant Jacks who cannot go out of a door fairly, like mere
landsmen. The votary of change followed them. Singleton, struggling
into his jacket, came last, tall and fatherly, bearing high his head
of a weather-beaten sage on the body of an old athlete. Only Charley
remained alone in the white glare of the empty place, sitting between
the two rows of iron links that stretched into the narrow gloom
forward. He pulled hard at the strands in a hurried endeavour to finish
his knot. Suddenly he started up, flung the rope at the cat, and
skipped after the black tom which went off leaping sedately over chain
compressors, with its tail carried stiff and upright, like a small flag
pole.
Outside the glare of the steaming forecastle the serene purity of the
night enveloped the seamen with its soothing breath, with its tepid
breath flowing under the stars that hung countless above the mastheads
in a thin cloud of luminous dust. On the town side the blackness of
the water was streaked with trails of light which undulated gently on
slight ripples, similar to filaments that float rooted to the shore.
Rows of other lights stood away in straight lines as if drawn up on
parade between towering buildings; but on the other side of the harbour
sombre hills arched high their black spines, on which, here and there,
the point of a star resembled a spark fallen from the sky. Far off,
Byculla way, the electric lamps at the dock gates shone on the end of
lofty standards with a glow blinding and frigid like captive ghosts of
some evil moons. Scattered all over the dark polish of the roadstead,
the ships at anchor floated in perfect stillness under the feeble gleam
of their riding-lights, looming up, opaque and bulky, like strange and
monumental structures abandoned by men to an everlasting repose.
Before the cabin door Mr. Baker was mustering the crew. As they
stumbled and lurched along past the mainmast, they could see aft
his round, broad face with a white paper before it, and beside his
shoulder the sleepy head, with dropped eyelids, of the boy, who held,
suspended at the end of his raised arm, the luminous globe of a lamp.
Even before the shuffle of naked soles had ceased along the decks, the
mate began to call over the names. He called distinctly in a serious
tone befitting this roll-call to unquiet loneliness, to inglorious and
obscure struggle, or to the more trying endurance of small privations
and wearisome duties. As the chief mate read out a name, one of the men
would answer: “Yes, sir!” or “Here!” and, detaching himself from the
shadowy mob of heads visible above the blackness of starboard bulwarks,
would step bare-footed into the circle of light, and in two noiseless
strides pass into the shadows on the port side of the quarterdeck.
They answered in divers tones: in thick mutters, in clear, ringing
voices; and some, as if the whole thing had been an outrage on their
feelings, used an injured intonation: for discipline is not ceremonious
in merchant ships, where the sense of hierarchy is weak, and where all
feel themselves equal before the unconcerned immensity of the sea and
the exacting appeal of the work.
Mr. Baker read on steadily:—“Hansen—Campbell—Smith—Wamibo. Now, then,
Wamibo. Why don’t you answer? Always got to call your name twice.”
The Finn emitted at last an uncouth grunt, and, stepping out, passed
through the patch of light, weird and gaudy, with the face of a man
marching through a dream. The mate went on faster:—“Craik—Singleton—
Donkin.... O Lord!” he involuntarily ejaculated as the incredibly
dilapidated figure appeared in the light. It stopped; it uncovered pale
gums and long, upper teeth in a malevolent grin.—“Is there any-think
wrong with me, Mister Mate?” it asked, with a flavour of insolence in
the forced simplicity of its tone. On both sides of the deck subdued
titters were heard.—“That’ll do. Go over,” growled Mr. Baker, fixing
the new hand with steady blue eyes. And Donkin vanished suddenly out
of the light into the dark group of mustered men, to be slapped on the
back and to hear flattering whispers:—“He ain’t afeard, he’ll give
sport to ’em, see if he don’t.... Reg’lar Punch and Judy show.... Did
ye see the mate start at him?... Well! Damme, if I ever!...” The last
man had gone over, and there was a moment of silence while the mate
peered at his list.—“Sixteen, seventeen,” he muttered. “I am one hand
short, bo’sen,” he said aloud. The big west-countryman at his elbow,
swarthy and bearded like a gigantic Spaniard, said in a rumbling
bass:—“There’s no one left forward, sir. I had a look round. He ain’t
aboard, but he may turn up before daylight.”—“Ay. He may or he may
not,” commented the mate, “can’t make out that last name. It’s all a
smudge.... That will do, men. Go below.”
The distinct and motionless group stirred, broke up, began to move
forward.
“Wait!” cried a deep, ringing voice.
All stood still. Mr. Baker, who had turned away yawning, spun round
open-mouthed. At last, furious, he blurted out:—“What’s this? Who said
‘Wait’? What...”
But he saw a tall figure standing on the rail. It came down and
pushed through the crowd, marching with a heavy tread towards the
light on the quarterdeck. Then again the sonorous voice said with
insistence:—“Wait!” The lamplight lit up the man’s body. He was
tall. His head was away up in the shadows of lifeboats that stood on
skids above the deck. The whites of his eyes and his teeth gleamed
distinctly, but the face was indistinguishable. His hands were big and
seemed gloved.
Mr. Baker advanced intrepidly. “Who are you? How dare you...” he began.
The boy, amazed like the rest, raised the light to the man’s face. It
was black. A surprised hum—a faint hum that sounded like the suppressed
mutter of the word “Nigger”—ran along the deck and escaped out into
the night. The nigger seemed not to hear. He balanced himself where he
stood in a swagger that marked time. After a moment he said calmly:—“My
name is Wait—James Wait.”
“Oh!” said Mr. Baker. Then, after a few seconds of smouldering silence,
his temper blazed out. “Ah! Your name is Wait. What of that? What do
you want? What do you mean, coming shouting here?”
The nigger was calm, cool, towering, superb. The men had approached and
stood behind him in a body. He overtopped the tallest by half a head.
He said: “I belong to the ship.” He enunciated distinctly, with soft
precision. The deep, rolling tones of his voice filled the deck without
effort. He was naturally scornful, unaffectedly condescending, as if
from his height of six foot three he had surveyed all the vastness of
human folly and had made up his mind not to be too hard on it. He went
on:—“The captain shipped me this morning. I couldn’t get aboard sooner.
I saw you all aft as I came up the ladder, and could see directly you
were mustering the crew. Naturally I called out my name. I thought you
had it on your list, and would understand. You misapprehended.” He
stopped short. The folly around him was confounded. He was right as
ever, and as ever ready to forgive. The disdainful tones had ceased,
and, breathing heavily, he stood still, surrounded by all these white
men. He held his head up in the glare of the lamp—a head vigorously
modelled into deep shadows and shining lights—a head powerful and
misshapen with a tormented and flattened face—a face pathetic and
brutal: the tragic, the mysterious, the repulsive mask of a nigger’s
soul.
Mr. Baker, recovering his composure, looked at the paper close. “Oh,
yes; that’s so. All right, Wait. Take your gear forward,” he said.
Suddenly the nigger’s eyes rolled wildly, became all whites. He put
his hand to his side and coughed twice, a cough metallic, hollow, and
tremendously loud; it resounded like two explosions in a vault; the
dome of the sky rang to it, and the iron plates of the ship’s bulwarks
seemed to vibrate in unison, then he marched off forward with the
others. The officers lingering by the cabin door could hear him say:
“Won’t some of you chaps lend a hand with my dunnage? I’ve got a chest
and a bag.” The words, spoken sonorously, with an even intonation, were
heard all over the ship, and the question was put in a manner that made
refusal impossible. The short, quick shuffle of men carrying something
heavy went away forward, but the tall figure of the nigger lingered
by the main hatch in a knot of smaller shapes. Again he was heard
asking: “Is your cook a coloured gentleman?” Then a disappointed and
disapproving “Ah! h’m!” was his comment upon the information that the
cook happened to be a mere white man. Yet, as they went all together
towards the forecastle, he condescended to put his head through the
galley door and boom out inside a magnificent “Good evening, doctor!”
that made all the saucepans ring. In the dim light the cook dozed on
the coal locker in front of the captain’s supper. He jumped up as if
he had been cut with a whip, and dashed wildly on deck to see the
backs of several men going away laughing. Afterwards, when talking
about that voyage, he used to say:—“The poor fellow had scared me. I
thought I had seen the devil.” The cook had been seven years in the
ship with the same captain. He was a serious-minded man with a wife
and three children, whose society he enjoyed on an average one month
out of twelve. When on shore he took his family to church twice every
Sunday. At sea he went to sleep every evening with his lamp turned up
full, a pipe in his mouth, and an open Bible in his hand. Some one
had always to go during the night to put out the light, take the book
from his hand, and the pipe from between his teeth. “For”—Belfast used
to say, irritated and complaining—“some night, you stupid cookie,
you’ll swallow your ould clay, and we will have no cook.”—“Ah! sonny,
I am ready for my Maker’s call ... wish you all were,” the other
would answer with a benign serenity that was altogether imbecile
and touching. Belfast outside the galley door danced with vexation.
“You holy fool! I don’t want you to die,” he howled, looking up with
furious, quivering face and tender eyes. “What’s the hurry? You blessed
wooden-headed ould heretic, the divvle will have you soon enough. Think
of Us ... of Us ... of Us!” And he would go away, stamping, spitting
aside, disgusted and worried; while the other, stepping out, saucepan
in hand, hot, begrimed and placid, watched with a superior, cock-sure
smile the back of his “queer little man” reeling in a rage. They were
great friends.
Mr. Baker, lounging over the after-hatch, sniffed the humid night in
the company of the second mate.—“Those West India niggers run fine
and large—some of them ... Ough!... Don’t they? A fine, big man that,
Mr. Creighton. Feel him on a rope. Hey? Ough! I will take him into my
watch, I think.” The second mate, a fair, gentlemanly young fellow,
with a resolute face and a splendid physique, observed quietly that
it was just about what he expected. There could be felt in his tone
some slight bitterness which Mr. Baker very kindly set himself to
argue away. “Come, come, young man,” he said, grunting between the
words. “Come! Don’t be too greedy. You had that big Finn in your watch
all the voyage. I will do what’s fair. You may have those two young
Scandinavians and I ... Ough!... I get the nigger, and will take that
... Ough! that cheeky costermonger chap in a black frock-coat. I’ll
make him ... Ough!... make him toe the mark, or my ... Ough!.... name
isn’t Baker. Ough! Ough! Ough!”
He grunted thrice—ferociously. He had that trick of grunting so between
his words and at the end of sentences. It was a fine, effective
grunt that went well with his menacing utterance, with his heavy,
bull-necked frame, his jerky, rolling gait; with his big, seamed face,
his steady eyes, and sardonic mouth. But its effect had been long ago
discounted by the men. They liked him; Belfast—who was a favourite,
and knew it—mimicked him, not quite behind his back. Charley—but with
greater caution—imitated his rolling gait. Some of his sayings became
established, daily quotations in the forecastle. Popularity can go
no farther! Besides, all hands were ready to admit that on a fitting
occasion the mate could “jump down a fellow’s throat in a reg’lar
Western Ocean style.”
Now he was giving his last orders. “Ough! You, Knowles! Call all hands
at four. I want ... Ough!... to heave short before the tug comes.
Look out for the captain. I am going to lie down in my clothes....
Ough!... Call me when you see the boat coming. Ough! Ough!... The
old man is sure to have something to say when he gets aboard,” he
remarked to Creighton. “Well, good-night.... Ough! A long day before us
to-morrow.... Ough!... Better turn in now. Ough! Ough!”
Upon the dark deck a band of light flashed, then a door slammed, and
Mr. Baker was gone into his neat cabin. Young Creighton stood leaning
over the rail, and looked dreamily into the night of the East. And he
saw in it a long country lane, a lane of waving leaves and dancing
sunshine. He saw stirring boughs of old trees outspread, and framing in
their arch the tender, the caressing blueness of an English sky. And
through the arch a girl in a light dress, smiling under a sunshade,
seemed to be stepping out of the tender sky.
At the other end of the ship the forecastle, with only one lamp
burning now, was going to sleep in a dim emptiness traversed by loud
breathings, by sudden short sighs. The double row of berths yawned
black, like graves tenanted by uneasy corpses. Here and there a curtain
of gaudy chintz, half drawn, marked the resting-place of a sybarite. A
leg hung over the edge very white and lifeless. An arm stuck straight
out with a dark palm turned up, and thick fingers half closed. Two
light snores, that did not synchronise, quarrelled in funny dialogue.
Singleton stripped again—the old man suffered much from prickly
heat—stood cooling his back in the doorway, with his arms crossed on
his bare and adorned chest. His head touched the beam of the deck
above. The nigger, half undressed, was busy casting adrift the lashing
of his box, and spreading his bedding in an upper berth. He moved about
in his socks, tall and noiseless, with a pair of braces beating about
his calves. Amongst the shadows of stanchions and bowsprit, Donkin
munched a piece of hard ship’s bread, sitting on the deck with upturned
feet and restless eyes; he held the biscuit up before his mouth in the
whole fist and snapped his jaws at it with a raging face. Crumbs fell
between his outspread legs. Then he got up.
“Where’s our water-cask?” he asked in a contained voice.
Singleton, without a word, pointed with a big hand that held a short
smouldering pipe. Donkin bent over the cask, drank out of the tin,
splashing the water, turned round and noticed the nigger looking at him
over the shoulder with calm loftiness. He moved up sideways.
“There’s a blooming supper for a man,” he whispered bitterly. “My dorg
at ’ome wouldn’t ’ave it. It’s fit enouf for you an’ me. ‘Ere’s a big
ship’s fo’c’sle!... Not a blooming scrap of meat in the kids. I’ve
looked in all the lockers....”
The nigger stared like a man addressed unexpectedly in a foreign
language. Donkin changed his tone:—“Giv’ us a bit of ’baccy, mate,” he
breathed out confidentially, “I ’aven’t ’ad smoke or chew for the last
month. I am rampin’ mad for it. Come on, old man!”
“Don’t be familiar,” said the nigger. Donkin started and sat down on a
chest near by, out of sheer surprise. “We haven’t kept pigs together,”
continued James Wait in a deep undertone. “Here’s your tobacco.”
Then, after a pause, he inquired:—“What ship?”—“Golden State,”
muttered Donkin indistinctly, biting the tobacco. The nigger whistled
low.—“Ran?” he said curtly. Donkin nodded: one of his cheeks bulged
out. “In course I ran,” he mumbled. “They booted the life hout of one
Dago chap on the passage ’ere, then started on me. I cleared hout
’ere.—” “Left your dunnage behind?”—“Yes, dunnage and money,” answered
Donkin, raising his voice a little; “I got nothink. No clothes, no bed.
A bandy-legged little Hirish chap ’ere ’as give me a blanket. Think
I’ll go an’ sleep in the fore topmast staysail to-night.”