From Old Featherstone’s portrait, and that painted ironical smile which
still had the power to call up in him a feeling of vague discomfort,
Broughton’s eyes travelled on to the portraits of ships which--Old
Featherstone excepted--were the room’s sole artistic adornment.
Over there in the corners--one each side of the portrait--were the old
“Childe Harold” and “Don Juan.” They were the first ships Old
Featherstone bought, in the distant days when he was still young
Featherstone, a smart young clerk in Daly’s office, whose astonishing
rise to fortune was yet on the knees of the gods.
They were old frigate-built East Indiamen, both of them, the “General
Bunbury” and “Earl Clapham,” from some Bombay or Moulmein dockyard: teak
through and through, but as leaky as sieves with sheer age and years of
labouring in seaways. Young Featherstone bought them for a song: gutted
them, packed their roomy ’tween-decks with emigrants like herrings in a
barrel, and hurried them backwards and forwards as fast as he dared
between London and Australia while the gold rush of the ’sixties was at
its hottest. He was in too big a hurry even to give them new figureheads
to match their new names, with the result that a portly British general
and a highly respectable peer of Evangelistic tendencies had to endure
the indignity of an enforced masquerade, the one as the wandering
“Childe,” the other as the disreputable “Don” of many amours.
Goodness knows how these two old ships’ venerable ribs managed to stick
together running down the Easting: nor indeed how it was that they
didn’t carry their freight of hopeful fortune seekers to the bottom
before they were well clear of the Channel. However, by hook or by
crook, stick together they did, long enough at any rate to lay the
foundation of Featherstone’s success. The “Childe Harold”--she who was
the “General Bunbury”--created a bit of a sensation in the last lap of
her third voyage by sinking, poor old soul, in the West India Dock
entrance at the head of a whole fleet of shipping crowding in on the
tide. The “Don Juan”--the backsliding “Earl Clapham”--came to grief, by
a stroke of luck, just off the Mauritius, and her old bones (it must
have taken a small forest of teak to build her) fetched double what
Featherstone had paid for her for building material. But they had served
their purpose. Thereafter, Featherstone never looked behind him.
The old “Giaour”--_she_ started life as a steamer, in the days when
steam was suffering from over-inflation, and a good many speculators
were scalding their fingers badly with it. The “Cottonopolis,” of the
defunct “Spreadeagle” Line--that was how she began. Her accommodation
was the talk of the town, said to be the most lavish ever seen--a wash
basin to every six cabins--but she devoured such quantities of fuel, as
well as turning out such a brute in a seaway that her passenger list was
never more than half full, that the shareholders were glad to get rid of
her at a loss. There she was--an ugly great lump of a ship, with masts
that had a peculiar rake to them, something after the style of a Chinese
junk. Sail, too ... like a witch, she did!... Then the little
“Thyrza”--_she_ was a pretty little butterfly of a thing; but she was as
near being a mistake as any purchase Featherstone ever made. He had
bought her, so it was believed, with the intention at the back of his
mind of winning the China tea race; but the tea trade petering out, he
put her into the wool fleet instead. Broughton had seen the dainty
little ship many a time: a regular picture she used to look, beating up
to the Heads just as old Captain Winter had painted her. Rare hand with
a paint-brush that old chap was, and no mistake! Give him one good look
at a ship, and he’d get her likeness to a gantline ... notice things
about her, too, sometimes, that even her own skipper hadn’t found
out....
There was the “Manfred”--the unluckiest ship, surely, that ever left the
ways! The “Young Tamlin” was the name she used to go by, in the days
when she used to kill two or three men every trip. That was before Old
Featherstone got hold of her, of course: and her owners--she belonged to
a little one-ship company--got the jumps about it and sold her. Sold her
cheap, too ... but, bless you, that stopped her gallop all right! She
drowned no more men afterwards.
And--last of all--the “Maid of Athens.” ...
Broughton’s own ship--the pride of his heart, the apple of his eye, the
guiding motive, the absorbing interest of his life for more than
twenty-five years.
Broughton didn’t care much about that picture--never had done, though he
didn’t trouble to tell the old man so. No use asking for trouble: and he
was a contrary old devil if you crossed him! A Chinese ship-chandler’s
affair, it was, and moreover it showed the “Maid” with a spencer at the
main which she never carried: at least, not in Broughton’s time. A good
long time that meant, too ... ah well! They had grown old together, his
ship and he!
He remembered the day he got command of her as clearly as if it were
yesterday. He was chief officer of the “Haidée” at the time--getting
along in years, too, and beginning to wonder if he would ever have the
luck to get a ship of his own. She was a nice little ship, the “Haidée,”
the last of Daly’s fleet, and Featherstone bought her after old Daly,
who had given him a stool in his office years before, shot himself in
that very office in Fenchurch Street when the news came of the wreck of
the “Allan-a-Dale,” his favourite ship, on the Calf of Man. Quite a nice
little ship, but nothing out of the common about her: nothing a man
could take to particularly, somehow. And yet at the time he had wanted
nothing better than to be her skipper.
Old Captain Philpot had been queerish all that voyage; he used to nip
brandy on the quiet a lot, and take drugs when he could get them as
well. Soon after they left the Coromandel coast he went out of his mind
altogether, and Broughton found him one day, when he went down to
dinner, crawling round the cabin on all fours and complaining that he
was King Nebuchadnezzar and couldn’t find any grass to eat.
Good Lord! that was a time, too ... made a man sweat to think of it,
even after all these years! Hurricane after hurricane right through the
Indian Ocean: on deck most of the time, and sitting on the Old Man’s
head when he got rumbustious during the watch below. However, the poor
old chap died as quiet as a child, when he smelt the Western Islands,
and Broughton as chief officer took the vessel into port.
Old Featherstone came on board, as his custom was, as soon as she was
fairly berthed, and Broughton--tongue-tied and stammering as he always
was on important occasions of the kind--gave an account of his
stewardship. The old man listened with never a word, only just a grunt
or a brusque nod now and again; and when the tale was told made no
comment whatever beyond a curt “Humph! Well, you can’t have command of
this ship. She’s promised to Allinson. Can’t go back on him. Besides,
he’s senior to you.”
Then, with one foot on the gangway, he turned back and barked out:
“I’ve bought a new ship. ‘Philopena’ or some such outlandish name. She’s
at Griffin’s Wharf, Millwall. Better go and look at her. You can have
her if you fancy her.”
Half-way down the gangway he turned again.
“Come and dine with me at Blackheath on Thursday. Seven o’clock. And
don’t keep me waiting, mind! I’m a punctual man, or I shouldn’t be where
I am.”
That invitation--invitation? it was more like a Royal command--as
Broughton well knew, set the seal on his promotion.
The ship was the “Maid of Athens.”