IV

Broughton went in search of her as soon as he had finished up on board

the “Haidée” and turned her over to the care of the old lame shipkeeper.

He didn’t feel particularly excited; his feeling, naturally enough, was

one of pleasurable anticipation of an improvement in his material

circumstances--no more than that, as he realized with that wistful sense

of flatness and disappointment which inevitably accompanies the

discovery that some long-desired consummation has lost through the lapse

of time its power to excite and to intoxicate the mind. “If this had

happened ten years ago,” he thought rather sadly, “Lord, how full of

myself I should have been!” forgetting that middle age, when it does

make acquaintance with passion, seldom does it by halves.

He found the “Philopena” in a derelict, melancholy wet dock somewhere

among vacant lots and chemical works down in the Isle of Dogs, along

with a couple of dilapidated coasting colliers and a broken-down tug--a

smoky Thames-side sunset burning like a banked fire behind the

cynical-looking sheds of a shadowy and problematical Griffin--and he

fell in love with her on the instant.

There is--or perhaps one should rather say was, since it is doubtful if

the Age of Steam has cognizance of such sentimental weaknesses--a

certain kind of thrill, not to be satisfactorily defined in words,

which runs through a man’s whole being when first his eyes fall upon the

one ship which, out of all the thousands which sail the seas, seems

especially made to be the complement of his own being, as surely as a

woman is made for her mate. It is a feeling to which first love is

perhaps the thing most nearly comparable--it can make the most

commonplace of men into a poet; and even that lacks one of its

qualities--its pure and sexless virginity. Other ships there may be more

beautiful; but they leave him cold. They are not for him as she is for

him....

That thrill it was--that awakening of two of the root instincts of

mankind, the instinct to cherish, and the instinct to possess--which ran

(surprising even himself) through that most matter-of-fact and

unimaginative of men, David Broughton, when he first set eyes on the

ship that for twenty-odd years to come was destined to provide the main

interest and object of his existence.

There seemed to be nobody about the wharf, but Broughton untied a leaky

dinghy that he found moored under the piles and pulled out to her. The

nearer he got to her the better he liked her. Stern a bit on the heavy

side, he fancied--with too much weight aft she’d be inclined to run up

into the wind if you didn’t watch her. She’d want some handling, all

right, but it wouldn’t do to be afraid of her, either. Her lines were a

dream! He pulled all round her, viewing her from every angle; and as he

rowed under her keen bow he caught himself fancying that her little

dainty figurehead looked down upon him with a kind of wistful appeal--a

sort of “You won’t go away and leave me, will you?” look that won his

heart on the spot.

He made the boat fast to the crazy Jacob’s ladder and swung himself on

board. She was filthily dirty, appallingly neglected, with that

unspeakably forlorn and abandoned look which ships seem to get after a

long lay-up in port. The grime and litter everywhere made his heart

ache. The Dagoes had had her for the last year or two, and her little

cabin reeked of garlic and stale cigar smoke. The shipkeeper, a

drink-sodden old ruffian with a horrible red-running eye, who was

probably none too pleased at the prospect of losing his job now his

temporary home was sold, followed Broughton round grumbling and

croaking. Lor’ bless you, _she_ wouldn’t sail, not she! No more’n a

mule’ll go if he don’t want to! There was plenty had had a try at her,

and they all told the same tale. Somethink wrong with the way she was

built, must be ... or else they’d laid her keel of a Friday or

summat....

Broughton smiled to himself. Somehow, he thought, that ship was going to

sail for him! He couldn’t have explained the feeling for the life of

him, but there it was.

And so, in point of fact, things turned out. Just as a horse which is an

unmanageable fiend in the hands of a crack jockey will let some snip of

a stable lad do what he will with him--just as a dog made savage by

ill-usage will attach himself for life (and perhaps--who knows?--beyond)

to someone who first masters him and then shows him kindness--so did

this little wild “Philopena” under her new name of “Maid of Athens” show

no sign of the tricks and vices, whatever they might be, which had

brought her, like some lovely but wilful lady fallen among evil

companions, to the obscene desolation of that forlorn Millwall wet

dock. Twenty-five years ago ... ah, well, they had been happy years, on

the whole! A reserved and rather lonely man, not over fond of company,

Broughton had drifted into a negatively disastrous sort of marriage in

his young days with a woman considerably older than himself. With the

best will in the world to do so, he had been unable to feel any but a

superficial grief at her death a few years later; and in the house where

his married stepdaughter now lived he always felt like a stranger on

sufferance during his brief periods ashore. But he had found an abiding

content in the daily routine of his life at sea. He gave himself up to

his ship without grudging. She was his one interest in life, his hobby,

his love. He laid out his spare cash on little items of personal

adornment for her as for a loved woman, and on the new gear of which Old

Featherstone stinted her as his natural tendency to stinginess increased

with age.

It was a brother skipper, Tom Pellatt, of Maclean’s pretty little

clipper “Phoebe Maclean”--a silly, noisy chap Broughton privately

thought him--who had first put the idea into his head that the “Maid of

Athens” might one day become his own property in name as she already was

in spirit.

Pellatt had been dining on board when both ships were in Sydney Harbour,

and just as he was going he said:

“Tell you what, Broughton, you’ve been the making of this ship; and if

old Nethermillstone don’t leave her to you in his will he damn well

ought to, that’s all!”

Broughton put the suggestion aside with a laugh. Pellatt, who was one of

those people who, as the phrase goes, “talk as they warm,” and simply

said it out of a desire to say something complimentary and pleasing to

his host--Broughton’s absorption in his ship being something of a

standing joke among his fellow-captains when his back was

turned--probably forgot he had ever said it before he got back to his

own ship. But the words had sown their seed.

At first Broughton only played with the idea at odd moments: he would do

this, he would do that, if the ship were his--treating it as a pleasant

kind of game of make-believe wherewith to beguile an idle minute; but

always with the mental proviso that, of course, no one but a silly

gabbling ass like Pellatt would ever have thought of such a thing.

Then, gradually, he began to wonder if it really was such a ridiculous

notion, after all. Old Featherstone’s business would die with him, that

was very certain. Hadn’t he said as much himself, the last time

Broughton dined at Blackheath, about the time young Daly, whose father

Featherstone had worked for in his clerking days, came such a holy

mucker in the Bankruptcy Court?

“I don’t intend to leave my house-flag to be trailed through the mire!”

he had said.

And hadn’t he said, too, not once but many times:

“I shall never sell the ‘Maid of Athens’!”

Presently, from being a desirable but remote possibility, he began to

consider it in the light of a probability; and from that it was but a

short step to take to begin to look upon it as a right. Who, he asked

himself, had a stronger claim to the ship than he--if, indeed, half so

strong?

He began by degrees to make his plans more definitely. It was no longer

“if the ship were mine,” but “when she is mine.” He hugged the thought

to him, fed upon it, lived with it night and day. He hoped he could

honestly say he had never wished Old Featherstone’s death; but when the

news of his death had come he had not been able to repress a thrill of

exultation as the thought rose to the surface of his mind, “Now, at

last, she will surely be mine!”

It had been the old man himself who had finally turned what had until

then been no more than a vague hope into a virtual certainty.

It was on the occasion of that last dinner at Blackheath, a matter of

six weeks ago, just before the attack of bronchitis that had finished

the old fellow off. There he had sat in his big easy-chair by the fire,

looking incredibly frail and shrunken, his eyes, for all that, as keen

as ever in their sunken caves as they wandered from Broughton’s face to

the counterfeit presentment of the “Maid of Athens” riding proudly on

her painted sea.

“Well, Broughton,” he had snapped out, suddenly, for a moment almost

like his old self again, “you’ve thought a lot of the old ship, haven’t

you?”

Broughton, taken by surprise, and feeling, no doubt, just a little

guilty about those secret aircastles of his, said, stammering, well,

yes, he supposed he had.

And there the matter stopped. Not much, perhaps; but straws show which

way the wind blows. Broughton thought he was justified in reading a

certain significance into the incident.

And again, on the way up to the funeral that morning, he had looked in

at a little club he belonged to, and met half a dozen skippers of his

acquaintance: always the same tale--“Hello, Broughton! Off to plant old

Feathers, I suppose! Hope he’s come down handsome in his will.”

“Bless you, I’m not expecting anything!” had been Broughton’s answer, as

much to the jealous Fates as to them.... Well, it would soon be settled

now one way or the other. He didn’t really, in his heart of hearts,

believe in the possibility of that other way at all; but he included

it in his mind as a matter of form--again with that vague

half-superstitious notion of propitiating some watchful and sardonic

Destiny.

He was surprised to find himself so little excited now that the great

moment had arrived. He had had to keep a tight hand on himself on the

way up from the cemetery, lest he should betray his fever of nervous

impatience to his companions, and he had been relieved when the lawyer’s

constant flow of chatter obviated the necessity of his taking any share

in the conversation. Now, he was glad to find, he had got himself well

under control. He was even able to derive a certain quiet interest from

observing the suppressed eagerness on the decorous countenances of Old

Featherstone’s relations. A so-so lot, on the whole! Broughton thought

by the looks of ’em that old Thomas must have had the lion’s share of

the family wits.

Funny that a man should spend all his life piling money up, and then

have no one to leave it to that he really cared for! “My brother’s

children’ll get my money when I’m gone,” Old Featherstone used to say;

“don’t think much of ’em, but there it is! I hope they’ll enjoy

spending it as much as I’ve enjoyed making it.” ...

The little lawyer sipped the last of his port, drew his chair up to the

table, and rummaged in the depths of his shabby brown bag with the air

of grave importance of a conjurer about to produce rabbits from a hat.

Ah, here was the rabbit--a blue, folded paper which he unfolded,

flattened with immense deliberation, and began to read in the dead

silence which had suddenly fallen on the room.

By George, thought Broughton, the old fellow was warm and no mistake!

Houses here, houses there, shares in this railway, that bank, the other

mine. It didn’t interest him much personally, but it was as good as a

play to see the pale gooseberry eyes of that grocer-looking chap bulging

with excitement until they bade fair to drop out of his head.

“The house ‘Pulo Way’ and the contents thereof (with the exception of

certain items specified elsewhere),” droned on the lawyer’s unmusical,

monotonous voice, “to Rosina Barratt for her life.” ... Rosina

Barratt--that was the dyspeptic niece. Broughton felt glad to know he’d

done the proper thing by her. She deserved it. A decent woman: and he

must have been a crotchety old devil to live with in his latter days!

Good Lord, what an interminable rigmarole this legal business was!

Broughton moved restlessly in his seat. The ships--the ships! Was he

never coming to them?

His own name, starting at him out of the midst of the formal

phraseology, made his heart miss a beat. Here it was at last: but

no--not yet----

“To Captain David Broughton my oil painting of the clipper ship ‘Maid of

Athens’ in gold frame, knowing his regard for the ship and that he will

value the painting on that account....”

Broughton just managed to bite back a laugh in time. If the old chap had

known what he really thought about that picture!

The lawyer droned on. Somebody got that black clock on the

mantelpiece--somebody else the old man’s Malacca cane--two hundred

pounds to little Jenkinson--a hundred to the lawyer. The little clerk

sat up and smirked like a Sunday School kid that hears its name read out

for a prize; but the lawyer, Broughton thought not without a touch of

amusement, didn’t look any too well pleased with his.

The ships--the ships--what about the ships?...

“I desire that my two ships, ‘Maid of Athens’ and ‘Thyrza,’ shall be

sold within twelve months after my decease, and the proceeds of the sale

divided amongst the legatees aforesaid in the same proportion as the

rest of my estate.”

It seemed to Broughton that the lawyer’s respectfully modulated tones

went roaring and echoing round the room, with a note of derision in them

like the ironical laughter of fiends. A black mist swam before his eyes

for a minute or two, obscuring the prim Victorian dining-room and its

familiar contents--a mist through which the three lit gas-globes on the

brass chandelier shone large, round, and haloed like sun-dogs in the Far

North.

The mist, clearing, left everything distinct again. The thundering voice

subsided again to its former dry monotone. The lawyer brought his

reading to a close, folded his eyeglasses, and replaced his documents

in his bag. A discreet murmur of excited talk broke out among the

relatives.

The dyspeptic niece, important in the consciousness of her legacy, came

twittering up to Broughton as he rose to go.

“_So_ kind of you to come, Captain Broughton! My uncle would have

appreciated your being here. And you’ll let me know where to send your

picture, won’t you? I’m so glad it’s going to you. One likes to think

things are going to those who will appreciate them.”

The picture! Broughton nearly laughed in the woman’s face--nearly told

her to keep the damned picture. But he thought better of it--it wasn’t

the poor silly creature’s fault, after all!

The lawyer hailed him as he stood on the steps, buttoning his overcoat,

while he waited for his hansom.

“Can’t I give you a lift anywhere, Captain Broughton? Going to be a

foggy night, I fancy.”

Broughton shook his head with a curt “No, thanks--walking!”

The little lawyer, who was a shrewd observer of men and, like most

chatterboxes, a kindly soul, and who was, moreover, none too pleased

with his own legacy, shook his head and sighed as he watched the

square-set figure disappear into the fog and darkness.

“That man’s had a bit of a knock,” he reflected. “Wonder if he’s got

anything to live on? Not much, I dare say. Wouldn’t have hurt that

stingy old devil to leave him a hundred or two.... Ah well....”

V

Broughton strode away through the foggy suburban streets. He was afraid

he’d been a bit offhand with that lawyer chap. Well, he couldn’t help

that! He felt he couldn’t stand his gabble--not at present.

He wanted above everything else to be alone. He didn’t feel as if he

could face the well-meant curiosity and the equally well-meant sympathy

of those men who had wished him luck that morning. His wound had struck

too deep for such superficial salves to be other than an added

irritation. Normally inclined to err on the side of amiability, he felt

just now at odds with all the rest of humankind. He could fancy the

whispers that would follow him--“There goes poor Broughton--feeling

pretty sickish, you bet!”

The first staggering sensation of blank and bewildered disappointment

had passed away, and in its place there surged up within him a cold tide

of black anger against Old Featherstone.

So the old devil had been laughing at him in his sleeve that night--even

as he was laughing at him now, very likely, in whatever unholy place he

was gone to! He had guessed his thoughts, he supposed, in that damned

uncanny way he had. If the dead face now lying under the cold cemetery

mould had lain in Broughton’s pathway now he would have ground his heel

into the sardonic smile that still curled its stiff and silent lips.

Him and his blasted picture!... A thing that wasn’t worth giving

wall-space to! A damned ship-chandler’s daub! Why, give him a few

splashes of ship’s paint and a brush and he’d make a better fist at it

himself!

He strode blindly on, through interminable crescents of smug villas,

their pavements greasy with fallen leaves, along dreary streets of

shabby “semis,” without noticing or caring where he was going: swinging

his neatly rolled umbrella regardless of the fine rain which had begun

to fall and was gathering in a million glistening drops on his black

coat. His mood cried aloud for the relief of physical effort, of

physical discomfort. Now and then he was brought up short by a blank

wall that drove him back upon his traces; now and then he cannoned

unnoticing into passing pedestrians, who turned, conscious of something

unusual in his manner, to watch him out of sight, then continued their

way wondering if he were drunk or mad.

Presently the streets of dull “semis” gave place to streets of seedy

rows, with here and there a corner off-licence or a fried-fish shop

discharging its warm oily odours upon the chill air; and at last,

turning a corner, he found himself suddenly in a wide road whose greasy

pavements were lined with stalls and flares, yelling salesmen, and

groups of draggle-tailed women.

He looked about him stupidly, uncertain of his bearings, though the

blare of a ship’s syren striking on his ear told him that he was not far

from the river. He was suddenly aware that he was wet and hungry and

very tired, and that his feet in his best boots hurt him abominably, for

he was no better a walker than most sailormen. He asked a passing

pedestrian where he was.

“Lower Road, Deptford.”... Why, he was less than a quarter of an

hour’s walk from the Surrey Commercial Docks, where the “Maid of Athens”

was even now lying, having just finished discharging the cargo of

linseed she had loaded at the River Plate. He couldn’t do better than

get on to the ship, he decided; he had been knocked out of time, and no

mistake, and there he would be able to sit down quietly and think things

over.

The fog, which had been comparatively light on the higher ground, had

been steadily growing denser as he neared the river. There were haloes

round the flares that roared above the street stalls, and the lighted

shop windows were mere luminous blurs in the surrounding murk.

“Want to mind where you’re steppin’ to-night, Cap’n,” the watchman

hailed him as he passed the dock gates; “it’s thick, an’ no

mistake--thick as ever I see it!”

Thick wasn’t the word for it! Once away from the fights and noise of the

road, the darkness seemed like something you could feel--a solid mass of

clammy, clinging moisture, catching at the throat like a cold hand,

getting into the backs of your eyes and making them ache and smart. You

couldn’t see your hand before your face.

Broughton groped his way along the narrow, slimy causeway which lay

between the stacks of piled-up lumber, exuding their sharp, damp,

resinous fragrance, and the intense darkness, broken occasionally by a

vague tremulous reflection where some ship’s lights contrived to pierce

it, which brooded over the unseen waters of the dock. Lights showed

forlornly here and there at the openings of the lanes which led away

between the piled deals--abysses of blackness as dark as the Magellanic

nebulæ. Ship’s portholes gleamed round and watchful as the eyes of huge

monsters of the slime. Bollards started up suddenly out of the fog like

menacing figures, and cranes straddled the path like black Apollyons in

some marine Pilgrim’s Progress. Once Broughton pulled himself up only

just in time to save himself from stepping over the edge of a yawning

pit of nothingness in which the water lipped unseen against the slimy

piles. The thought involuntarily crossed his mind that perhaps he might

have done worse; but he put it from him resolutely. His code, a simple

one, did not admit suicide as a permissible solution of the problems of

life.

All work was long since over, and the docks were as silent and deserted

as the grave--nothing to be heard but the steady drip-drip of the rain,

once the distant tinkle of a banjo on board some vessel out in the dock,

and now and again the melancholy wail of a steamer groping her way up

river. The “Maid of Athens” lay right at the far end of one of the older

basins; she was all still and dark but for the oil lamp that burned

smokily at the head of the gangway, and a faint glow from the galley

which showed where the old shipkeeper sat alone with his pipe and his

memories.

Old Mike came hobbling out at the sound of Broughton’s step on the

plank.

“’Strewth, Cap’n,” he exclaimed in astonishment, “you’ve chose a grand

night to come down an’ no fatal error! Will I make a bit o’ fire in the

cabin an’ brew ye a cup o’ tea? Sure you’re wet to the skin!”

“Poor old chap!” Broughton thought, as he watched him busying himself

about his fire-lighting with the gnarled and shaking hands that had

hauled on so many a tackle-fall in their day. It would be a hard blow

for him when he knew that ship was to be sold. He had served in

Featherstone’s ships many years as A.B. and latterly as bos’n, until a

fall from aloft put an end to his seagoing days; and this little job of

shipkeeping was one of the very few planks between him and the

workhouse.

The world was none too kind to old men who had outlived their

usefulness. What was it that old flintstone had said: “You can’t teach

an old dog new tricks”? Well, that was true enough, anyway!

He called to mind an incident that had happened in Sydney his last

voyage there. An old man had come up to him begging for a job. He didn’t

care what--night watchman, anything; and he had opened his coat to show

that he had neither waistcoat nor shirt beneath it.

“You don’t remember me, Broughton,” the old fellow had said; and,

looking closer, he had recognized in that incredibly seedy wreck one of

his own old skippers--before whose almost godlike aloofness and majesty

he had once trembled in mingled fear and awe. It was a pitiful tale he

had to tell. He had been thrown out of a berth at sixty-five, through

his ship being lost by no fault of his own, and couldn’t get in

anywhere. That proud, arrogant old man, full of small vanities!...

Broughton had had little enough cause in the past to think of him over

kindly; but the memory of the encounter had remained with him for weeks

at the time, and returned to trouble him now with an added

significance.

Old Mike’s bit o’ fire smouldered a little and went out, leaving

nothing but an acrid stink to mark its passing. The well-stewed

tea in the enamel cup at his elbow, with the two ragged slices of

margarine-plastered bread beside it in the slopped saucer, grew cold

unheeded. Outside, the rain dripped down like slow tears. And there he

sat, with his clenched hands before him on the table, staring into the

Past.

There wasn’t a plank of her, not a rivet, not a rope-yarn that didn’t

mean something to him. True, Old Featherstone had given his money for

her: and if he knew that old man aright he hadn’t given a brass farthing

more than he could help. But he--what had he given to her? Money--well,

he had given that, too, since Old Featherstone had turned mean, though

his twenty pounds a month hadn’t run to a great deal. But that was

neither here nor there. Things money could never buy he was thinking of,

sitting there in the cold, fog-dimmed cabin.

The years of his life had gone into her--affection, understanding,

ungrudging service, sleepless nights and anxious days. What wonder that

she seemed almost like a part of himself? What wonder that to a man of

his rigid, slow-moving type of mind a future in which she had no part

was a thing unthinkable?

His memory passed on to all the mates and second mates who had

faced him at meals over that very cabin. A regular procession of

them--Marston--Reid--what was the name of that chap with the light

eyelashes?--Barnes, was it?--Digby--he was a decent chap, now--went into

steam years ago and was chief officer in one of the B. I. ships last

time Broughton heard of him. That was what _he_ ought to have done. He

had known it at the back of his mind all along. But he couldn’t leave

her--he couldn’t leave her!

Well, well, there was no use meeting trouble half-way! What was it old

Waterhouse, his first skipper in his brassbound days, used to say? “If

you’re jammed on a lee shore and can’t stay, why, then try wearing. If

that don’t work, try boxing her off. But whatever you do, do something!

Don’t sit down and howl!”

They used to laugh at him and mimic him behind his back, cheeky young

devils; but it was damned good advice for all that. He was on a lee

shore now right enough; but there was bound to be a way out somewhere if

he kept his head.

An intense drowsiness and weariness had begun to creep over him--just

such a leaden desire for sleep as he had experienced in that same cabin

many a time after days of incessant and anxious battling with gales and

seas. His unmade bed looked singularly unenticing, so, dragging a

blanket from the pile upon it, he kicked off his sodden boots and lay

down on the cabin settee.

A rising wind had begun to moan and sigh in the rigging, driving the

rain in sheets against the skylight ... there was a way out, a way out

... if he could only think of it ... somewhere....