1
The _Negro Boy_ tavern is known by few people in its own parish, for it
is a house with nothing about it to distinguish its fame to those who do
not know that a man may say to his friend, when their ships go different
ways out of Callao, "I may meet you at the _Negro Boy_ some day." It is
in a road which returns to the same point, or near to it, after a
fatiguing circuit of the Isle of Dogs. No part of the road is better
than the rest. It is merely a long road. That day when I first heard of
Bill Purdy I was going to the tavern hoping to meet Macandrew, Chief of
the _Medea_. His ship was in again. But there was nobody about. There
was nothing in sight but the walls, old, sad, and discreet, of the yards
where ships are repaired. The dock warehouses opposite the tavern
offered me their high backs in a severer and apparently an endless
obduracy. The _Negro Boy_, as usual, was lost and forlorn, but resigned
to its seclusion from the London that lives, having stood there long
enough to learn that nothing can control the ways of changing custom.
Its windows were modest and prim in green curtains. Its only adornment
was the picture, above its principal door, of what once was a negro boy.
This picture now was weathered into a faded plum-coloured suit and a pair
of silver shoe-buckles--there was nothing left of the boy himself but the
whites of his eyes. The tavern is placed where men moving in the new
ways of a busy and adventurous world would not see it, for they would not
be there. Its dog Ching was asleep on the mat of the portico to the
saloon bar; a Chinese animal, in colour and mane resembling a lion whose
dignity has become sullenness through diminution. He could doze there
all day, and never scare away a chance customer. None would come. But
men who had learned to find him there through continuing to trade to the
opposite dock, would address him with some familiar and insulting words,
and stride over him.
The tavern is near one of the wicket gates of the irregular intrusion
into the city of a maze of dock basins, a gate giving those who know the
district a short cut home from the ships and quays; the tavern was sited
not altogether without design. And there came Macandrew through that
gate, just as I had decided I must try again soon. His second, Hanson,
was with him. They crossed to the public-house, and we stooped over the
yellow lump of Chinese apathy to talk to him, and went through the swing
doors into the saloon. The saloon was excluded from the gaze of the rest
of the house by little swinging screens of frosted glass above the bar,
for that was where old friends of the landlord met, who had known him all
the time their house-flags had been at home in the neighbouring docks;
and perhaps had even sailed with him when be himself went to sea. A
settee in red plush, salvage from the smoke-room of a liner, ran round
the walls, with the very mahogany tables before it which it knew when
afloat. Some men in dingy uniforms and dungarees were at the tables.
Two men I did not know stood leaning over the bar talking confidentially
across it to a woman who was only a laugh, for she was hidden. One of
the men turned from the counter to see who had come in.
"Hullo Mac," he cried, in a voice hearty with the abandon of one who,
perhaps, had been there long enough; "look here, here's Jessie says she's
going to leave us."
A woman's hand, spoiled by many heavy rings, moved across the counter and
shook his arm in warning. The youngster merely closed his own hand over
it. "Isn't it hard. Really going to forsake us. Won't mix your whiskey
or uncork my lemonade any more. What are we going to do when we come
home now?"
There was an impatient muttering beyond him, and he made public a
soothing and exaggerated apology. All the men in the room, even the
group bent over a diagram of a marine engine they had drawn in chalk on
their table, looked up in surprise, first at the youngster who had raised
his voice, and then to watch the tall shadow of a woman pass quickly down
the counter-screen and vanish. Still laughing, the young man, with his
uniform cap worn a little too carelessly, nodded to the company, and went
out with his companion.
Macandrew stared in contempt at the back of the fellow as he went. "A
nice boy that. Too bright and bonny for my ship. What's that he was
saying about Jessie?" He tried to see where she was, and lowered his
voice. "I know his kind. I saw them together last night, in the Dock
Road. What does she have anything to do with him for? We know her of
course . . . but even then. . . . She's really not a bad sort. She's
like that with all those young dogs. Can't help it, I suppose."
He moved to the bar, a massive figure, beyond the age of a sea-going
engineer, but still as light on his feet as a girl. "Where's she gone?"
He pushed open one of the little glass screens, and put his petulant
face, with its pale eyes set like aquamarines in bronze, into an opening
too small to frame it. "Can you see her, Hanson?"
Hanson winked at me, adjusted the spectacles on his nose, and grinned.
With that grin, and his spectacles, he was as surprising as a handsome
gargoyle. His height compelled him to lean forward and to grin downward,
even when speaking to a big man like Macandrew. He turned to his chief
now, and both hands went up to his spectacles. In the way the corners of
his mouth turned up before he spoke, whimsically wrinkling his nose, and
in his intent and amused regard, there was a suggestion of the mockery of
a low immortal for beings who are fated earnestly to frustrate
themselves. His grin gave you the uncomfortable feeling that it was
useless to pretend you were keeping nothing from him.
"Here goes," said Hanson. "Never mind Jessie. I've got something to
tell you, Chief. I'm leaving you this voyage."
Macandrew was instantly annoyed. "Going? Dammit, you can't. Look at
the crowd I've got now. You mustn't do it."
"I must. They are a thin lot, but you could push the old _Medea_ along
with anything. I've got another ship. My reason is very good, from the
way I look at it."
Hanson turned his grin to me. He was going to enjoy the privilege of
seeing his reasons deemed unreasonable. "Don't think it's a better job
I've got. It's worse. It's a very rummy voyage. We may complete it,
with luck. It's a boat-running lunacy, and some mining gear. She's
called the _Cygnet_. I've been over her, and we shall call her something
different before we see the last of her."
"Then why are you going?" I asked him.
"To see what will happen. . . ."
Macandrew interrupted him. "What? And you next on the list for Chief?
You're romantic, young man, and that means you're no engineer. Is there
a lot of money in it?"
"There isn't, but there's some life. I want to know what I'm made of.
Shall I ever learn it under you? Down below in the _Medea_ is like
winding up a clock and going to sleep. Do you know the _Cygnet_ has six
inches of freeboard?" He was talking to me, but kept glancing sideways
to see what effect this had on Macandrew. But Macandrew's broad back was
impassive.
"Six inches of freeboard, barring her false bulwarks of deal boards, and
she's going out to--I forget the name of the place, but I could show you
where it is within a hundred miles on a map that doesn't give its name.
It's up the Pondurucu."
Macandrew made no sign, and Hanson, his humour a little damped, spoke
more seriously. "I don't think she'll ever get there, but it will be
interesting to see where she stops, and why."
Macandrew heaved round on his junior. "There's drivel. It sounds well
from an engineer and a mathematician, doesn't it?" He turned away again.
"Supposing," he said, over his shoulder, "supposing you pull this ship
through all right, then where will you be? Any better off?"
"I think so," said Hanson. He couldn't talk to Macandrew's back, so he
bent over me and pointed a challenging finger at my necktie. "I've never
risked anything yet, not even my job. This is where I do it. It'll be
nice to attempt something when the odds are that you can't finish it, and
there's nothing much in it if you do. Why," he said, grinning at his
Chief's back, "if I were to stay with him I'd become so normal that I'd
slip into marriage and safety as a matter of course, and have to give up
everything."
"Who's in charge of this lunacy?" asked Macandrew. His voice was a
little truculent.
"All right, Chief. I shan't remember his name any the better because
you're annoyed with me. I haven't seen the skipper yet. I think I heard
him called Purdy."
"Purdy? Bill Purdy?" Macandrew was incredulous. "Do you know what
you've let yourself in for? If Purdy's got the job, I know why. Nobody
else would take it, and he's the last man, anyway, who ought to have it."
"What, drink?" asked Hanson.
"Lord, no. Not Purdy. No. It's the man himself. I've known him a long
time, and I like him, but he'll never do. He can't make up his mind to a
course. Don't you remember the _Campeachy_ case? I expect it was before
your time. Purdy had her. He was coming up-Channel, and got nervous
over the weather, and put into Portland for a pilot. There was no pilot.
So he decided to put out again and go on. It never occurred to him that
as he was in shelter he'd better stay there till a pilot arrived, because
getting out of that was exactly when he'd want one. He put her ashore.
That was like Purdy, to play for safety and make a wreck. When he got
over the fuss Lloyd's raised about it he refused to take command again
for some time. He couldn't even make up his mind whether he wanted a
ship at all."
Hanson listened to this with the air of one who was being reassured in a
doubtful enterprise.
"You mistake me, Chief," he said. "You are only improving my reasons for
going. Not only is the ship crank, but so is her skipper. Now tell me
. . ."
Macandrew frowned at his junior, and his curiously pale eyes became
distinctly inhuman. I believe he thought his counsel was being laughed
at. But the door opened, and he touched Hanson's arm. A little man of
middle age stood there, who turned, and actually prevented the doors from
swinging together with their usual announcement of another customer. For
only a moment he raised his downcast eyes to see who was there, and then
nodded sadly to Macandrew. His drooping moustache conformed to the
downward lines of his face, which was that of a man who had been long
observing life with understanding, and had not a lively opinion of it.
Macandrew's demeanour changed. It was now mild and almost affectionate
as he greeted the little man. "Come over here, Purdy, and tell us what
you've been doing. Here's Hanson, this young fellow. I hear he's
sailing with you. He's your Chief. You'd better know him."
Purdy raised his eyes in a grave and momentary survey, made to shake
hands with Hanson, but hesitated, and did so only because Hanson put out
his own great fist with decision. Purdy did not speak, except to say to
Hanson: "We're signing-on tomorrow. I'll meet you at the shipping office
then." He seemed to forget the pair of them, paused, and went to a far
vacant corner of the bar. The barmaid, as he got there, returned, and
stopped to say something to him.
"Well, I'm damned," muttered Macandrew. "Look here, Jessie," he cried,
"here's all us young men been waiting for nearly twenty minutes, and you
take no notice of us, but as soon as a captain looks across the counter,
there you are. But how did you know he was a captain? That's what I'd
like to know. He's only wearing a bowler hat."
2
The _Medea_ had been ordered unexpectedly to Barry for loading, to take
the place of an unready sister-ship; and Macandrew, of whom I have had
much experience, would be active, critical of what a dog must put up with
in life, and altogether unfit for intimate, amiable, and reminiscent
conversation. Yet I wanted to see him again before he left, and went
past the Board of Trade Office hoping for signs of the _Medea_, for I had
heard she was assembling a crew that morning. But the marine-store
shops, with their tarpaulin suits hanging outside open-armed and
oscillating, looked across to the men lounging against the
shipping-office railings, and the idlers stared across at the tarpaulins.
It did not appear to be a place where anything was destined to happen.
It merely looked like rain.
Macandrew might be inside with his crowd of firemen and greasers. Behind
the brass grille there a clerk, solitary and absorbed in his duties, bent
over a pile of ships' articles, and presented to the seamen in the public
space beyond him only the featureless shine of a bald head. The seamen,
scattered about in groups, shabby and listless, with a few of their
officers among them, were as sombre and subdued as though they had
learned life had nothing more to offer them, and they were present only
because they might as well use up the salvage of their days. The clerk
raised his head and questioned the men before him with a quick, inclusive
glance. "Any men here of the _Cygnet_?" he demanded. His voice, raised
in certainty above the casual murmuring of the repressed, made them all
as self-conscious and furtive as though discovered in guilt. Hanson's
head appeared above the crowd, as he rose from a bench and went to the
official. "I'm the engineer of the _Cygnet_. We're waiting for Captain
Purdy."
The clerk complained. He pulled out his watch. "He said he would be
ready for me at ten this morning. Now you've lost your turn, and there
are three other ships." He turned away in a manner which told every one
that Hanson had now become non-existent, pushed aside the _Cygnet's_
papers, and searched the room once more. "Ah, good morning, Captain
Hudson. You ready for me? Then I'll take you next." The captain went
around to stand beside the official, and his crew clustered on their side
of the bars, with their caps in their hands.
"A good start that," said Hanson to me. "Perhaps, after all, we never
shall start. Must be a rum chap, that Purdy."
He told me the _Medea's_ crowd was there, but perhaps Macandrew had
already signed, and so would not appear. That meant I might not see him
for another year; but as I left the office I found him coming up its
steps outside, and not as though there were the affairs of a month to be
got into two days, but in leisurely abstraction. He might have been
making up his mind that, after all, there was no need to call there, for
he was studying each step as if he were looking for the bottom of a
mystery. His fingers were twirling the little ivory pig he carries as a
charm on his watchguard. The pig is supposed to assist him when he is in
a difficulty. He raised his eyes.
"Anyhow," he despaired to me with irrelevance, "I can't do anything for
him."
I waited for the chance of a clue. "I thought," Macandrew quietly
soliloquized, "he knew better than that. He's been a failure, but all
the same, he's got a better head than most of us. She's sure to bring
him to grief."
"What's all this about?" I ventured.
"I've just been talking to Purdy. You remember what Hanson said of that
voyage he's making? Purdy is taking Jessie with him. You don't know
Purdy, but I do. And I know Jessie; but that's nothing."
"Taking her with him?" I asked; "but how. . . ."
"Oh, cook, of course. That'll be it. She'll be steward, naturally.
That's reasonable. You've seen her. Jessie's the sort of woman would
jump at the chance of such a pleasant trip, as cook."
"I don't understand. . . ."
"Who said you did? Nobody does but the pair of them. I know what
another man might see in Purdy. But a woman! He's middle-aged, quiet,
and looks tired. That woman is young and lively, and she'll be bored to
death with him on such a trip."
"But I thought you said . . ."
"What have I said? I've said nothing. Jessie's away to sea as cook.
Why not? I'm going inside. Are you coming in?"
Crossing the floor of the office, Hanson caught Macandrew's arm. "Your
lot are signing-on now." The master of the _Medea_ was round with the
official tallying the men by the ship's papers. "I see it," Macandrew
answered. "I've signed. I wanted to catch the old man before he began
that job."
"We're hung up for Purdy," Hanson told him. "Nobody seems to know where
he is." Hanson was amused.
"Yes. Well . . . he'll be here all right . . . and now this new job
which you think so funny, young Hanson. See it goes through. Presently
it won't be so funny. Hang on to it then."
Hanson was surprised by this, and a trifle hurt. He was beginning to
speak, making the usual preliminary adjustment of his spectacles, when a
movement near the door checked him. His hands remained at his glasses,
as if aiding his sight to certify the unbelievable.
"What's this?" he murmured. "Here's Purdy. Isn't that the _Negro Boy's_
barmaid with him . . . is she with him?" He continued to watch,
apparently for some sign that this coincidence of his captain and a
barmaid in a public office was designed.
The bent gaze of the master of the _Cygnet_ might have noticed the boots
of his engineer, for he took in the room no higher than that. Then he
came forward with his umbrella, still in contemplation. It might have
been no more than a coincidence. She, too, approached, a little behind
him, but obscuring his dull meagreness, for she was a head taller, and a
bold and challenging figure. Her blond hair distinguished her even more
than the emphasis of her florid hat. Her pallor that morning refined the
indubious coarseness of her face, and changed vulgarity into the
attractive originality of a spirited character. Many there knew her, but
she recognized nobody. She yawned once, in a fair piece of acting, and
in her movements and the poise of her head there was a disdain almost
plain enough to be insolence. Purdy turned to her, and the strange pair
conferred. I heard Hanson say to himself: "What on earth." She left
Purdy, bent her head with a gracious but stressed smile to Macandrew, and
went to the bench by the wall, where she sat, waiting, with her legs
crossed in a way that was a defiance and an attraction in such a place,
where a woman is rarely seen. She read a newspaper, perhaps because that
acted as a screen, though she turned its pages with a nervous abruptness
which betrayed her imitation of indifference.
3
The _Medea_ and the _Cygnet_, and the other ships I knew which carried
those whose fortunes were some concern of mine, might have sailed over
the edge of the world. My only communication was with an occasional
familiar name in the reports of the _Shipping List_. Then Macandrew came
home again. But it was difficult to meet him. Mrs. Macandrew told me he
was working by his ship in drydock. They had had trouble with the
engines that voyage, and she herself had seen little of him, except to
find him, when she came down of a morning, asleep in the drawing-room.
Just flung himself down in the first place, you know. In those greasy
overalls, too. He had told her the engine-room looked like a scrap-heap,
but the ship had to be ready for sea in ten days. Once he had worked
thirty-two hours on end. Think of that, and he had not been home for six
months. She would strongly advise any girl not to marry a man who went
to sea, and if I met Macandrew I was to bring him home at once. Did I
hear?
When I found the _Medea_ it was late in the day, for she was not in the
dry-dock that had been named. Her Chief had just gone ashore. There was
a chance that he would have called at the _Negro Boy_, but he had not
been seen there. Except for the landlord, who was at a table talking to
a stranger, the saloon was empty. A silk hat was on the table before the
stranger, beside a tankard, and the hat was surmounted by a pair of
neatly folded kid gloves. "Come over here," said the landlord. "Sit
here for a bit, Macandrew may come in. This is Dr. Maslin." A monocle
fell its length of black cord from the doctor's eye, and he nodded to me.
"The doctor used to be with me when I was running out East," explained
the landlord. "Where did you say you had come from now, Doctor? Oh,
yes, Tabacol. Funny name. I was never on the South American coast.
After I left you sick at Macassar, the last trip we had together--the old
_Siwalik_--I left the sea to younger men. But there you are, Doctor.
Still at it. Why don't you give it up?"
The doctor did not answer, except to make a bubbling noise in his
tankard. He placed it on the table again delicately and deliberately,
and wiped his grizzled moustache with a crimson silk handkerchief. He
put up his monocle, and seemed to be intently inspecting a gas globe over
the counter. I thought his grimace in this concentration came from an
effort to reinforce his will against all curiosity on our part. But it
appeared he was really looking at what showed, at an angle, of a portrait
on the wall of an inner room. He could just see it, from where he sat.
Anyhow, the landlord imagined it was the portrait which had caught his
friend's interest. "Looking at that crayon portrait, Doctor? Ah, showy
woman, isn't she? Used to be barmaid here. The Lord knows where she is
now. Went to sea, like a fool. Stewardess, or something worse. Much
more useful here."
The doctor's seamed face, sour and ironic, made it impossible to know
whether his expression was one of undisguised boredom, or only his show
of conventional politeness. I began to feel I had broken into the
intimacy of two men whose minds were dissimilar, but friendly through old
associations, and that the doctor's finer wit was reproving me for an
intrusion. So I rose, and asked indifferently what sort of a place was
Tabacol. Had he been there before?
"Never," said the doctor, "nor is it the kind of place one wishes to see
twice. We were kept at Tabacol because so many of our men were down with
fever. It is a little distance up the Pondurucu River . . . maybe two
hundred miles. Did you say. . . ? No. It is not really out of the way.
An ocean steamer calls at Tabacol once a month or six weeks. It is only
on the edge of what romantic people call the unknown."
It was evident he thought I could be one of the romantic. He looked at
me for the first time, twisting the cord of his eyeglass with his finger
and thumb in a fastidious way, and I thought his glance was to dissipate
some doubt he had that he ought to be speaking to me at all. He dropped
the cord suddenly as if letting go his reserve, and said slyly, with a
grave smile: "Perhaps the romantic think the unknown is worth looking
into because it may be better than what they know. At Tabacol I used to
think the unknown country beyond it looked even duller than usual. There
was a forest, a river, a silence, and it was either day or night. That
was all. If the voice of Nature is the voice of God. . . ."
The landlord was observing in surprise this conversational excursion by
his old friend, as if it were altogether new to him. He laughed aloud,
and, putting a consoling hand on his friend's shoulder as he rose, he
told us he must leave us for a few minutes, for he had business. "Look
more cheerful before I get back, Doctor."
The doctor chuckled, and stretched across to give his gloves a more
satisfactory position on his hat. "I don't understand what it can be
that attracts people to such a place. Young men, maybe yourself even,
wish to go there. Isn't that so? Yes. I've met such men in such
places. Then they did not give me the impression that they were
satisfied with their romance. Impossible, of course. Romance is never
in the place unless we put it there, and who would put even a sentimental
dream into such a hole as Tabacol? Tropical squalor. Broken people!
I've never seen romance in such a place, and don't expect to. . . ."
Several cabs, on their way to a ship outward bound, made an increasing
noise in the night, rattled by on the cobbles outside, their occupants
roaring a sentimental chorus, and drowned what the doctor was saying.
". . . folly. Worse than folly." He was holding his gloves now, and was
lightly flicking the edge of the table with them in place of verbal
emphasis. He suddenly regarded me again as if he strongly suspected me
of being his antipathy. "Who but a fool would take a woman to such a
country as that? Any romantic sentimentalist, I suppose. I forget the
name of the ship. There was, you might say, hardly sufficient room to
paint a name on her. She was no more than a tug. It was a miracle she
survived to get there at all, for she had crossed from England. Crossed
the Western ocean in such a craft, and brought a woman with him. Did
ever you hear of such folly?"
Now I was certain of our whereabouts, and felt a weak inclination to show
an elder that I, too, knew something about it; but when I leaned forward
eagerly and was about to speak, the doctor screwed in that devastating
monocle, and I felt I was only a curious example of the sort of thing he
especially disliked. For a minute, in which I wondered if I had quite
stopped his guarded flow, he said no more. Then he addressed his
eyeglass to a panel of the partition, and flicked his gloves at that.
"I had noticed for some days that little craft lying near us, but gave
her no attention. I had sixteen men to attend to with complexions like
lemons, and one died. There was no time to bother with other folk's
troubles. Our skipper, one breakfast-time, told me there was a woman
aboard that little thing, and he'd been asked whether I'd go over. She
was ill.
"I've seen some queer packets of misery at sea, but never one that
touched that ship. Her skipper seemed a regular fool. I had to ask him
to speak up, for he mumbled like a boy who has been caught out, and knows
it is useless to pretend. I learned from him that he was only just
beginning his voyage. You understand? He was just beginning it, there.
He was going up-river, to a point not on the chart. I cannot make out
now whether he wanted to put that woman ashore to get home in comfort at
the first opportunity, or whether . . . it's impossible to say. One
would sooner believe the best of another man, with half a chance. After
all," said the doctor bitterly, "as long as the woman survived I suppose
she was some consolation in misery.
"I scrambled over the deck lumber. There was hardly room to move. I
found her in a cabin where she could get little seclusion from the crew.
Hardly any privacy at all, I should say. As soon as I saw her I could
make a guess . . . however, I told the fellow afterwards what I thought,
and he gave me no answer. He even turned his back on me. He must have
known well enough that that river was no place for any sort of white
woman. He was condemning her perhaps to death just to make an ugly job
more attractive.
"I admit," said the doctor, with a sly glance, "that she could make it
attractive, for a sort of man. She was wrapped in a rosy dressing-gown.
She held it together with her hands. I noticed them . . . anybody might
. . . they were covered with rings. She had character, too. She made me
feel, the way she looked at me, that I was indiscreet in asking personal
questions. I could see what was wrong with her. It was debility, but
all the same the beginning of an end not far off, in that country.
"'You'll have to get out of this,' I told her.
"'Can't be done, Doctor,' she said coolly.
"'It can. A liner for England will be here in another week, and you must
take it.'
"'I don't,' she said. She was quiet enough, but she seemed a very wilful
woman. 'I've got my job here.'
"I told her that the skipper of her ship would never carry out his
orders, because they could not be carried out. I told her, what was
perfectly true, that their craft would rot on a sandbar, or find
cataracts, or that they'd all get eaten by cannibals, or die of something
nasty. I admit I tried to frighten her.
"'It's no good, Doctor,' she said. 'You can't worry me. I've got my
work to do in this ship, like the others.'
"'Pooh!' I said to her. 'Cooking and that. Anybody could do it. Let
the men do it. It's not a woman's job.'
"'You're wrong,' she said. 'It's mine. You don't know.'
"I began to get annoyed with this stubborn creature. I told her she
would die, if she didn't leave the working of that ship to those who
ought to do it.
"'Who ought?' she asked me, in a bit of a temper. 'I know what I have to
do. I'm going through with it. It's no good talking. I'll take my
chance, like the rest.'
"So I had to tell her that I was there because the master of her ship had
sent for me to give my advice. My business was to say what she ought to
do.
"'I don't want to be told. I know,' she said. 'The captain sent for
you. Talk to him.'
"My temper was going, and I told her that it was something to know the
captain himself had enough sense to send for me.
"'Look here,' she told me. 'I've had enough of this. I want to be
alone. Thank you for troubling to come over.'"
The doctor lifted his shoulders, and made a wry face, that might have
been disdain or pity.
"I was leaving her, but she called to me, and I went back. She held out
her hand. 'I do thank you for troubling about me. Of course I do. But
I want to stay on here--I must.'
"'Well, you know the penalty,' I said. 'I was bound to tell you that.'
"'What of it?' she said, and laughed at me. 'We musn't bother about
penalties. Good-bye!'
"I must say she made me feel that if the skipper of that ship had been of
different metal, she might almost have pulled him through. But what a
man. What a man! I saw his miserable little figure standing not far
from where my boat was when I was going. He made as if he were coming to
me, and then stopped. I was going to take no notice of him, but went up
and explained a thing or two. I'll bet he'll remember them. All he said
was: 'I was afraid you'd never change her mind,' and turned away. What a
man! There was a pair for you. I could understand him, but what could
have been in her mind? Whatever made her talk like that? That's the way
of it. There's your romance of the tropics, and your squalid Garden of
Eden, when you know it. A monotonous and dreary job, and a woman."
The landlord returned. The monocle fixedly and significantly regarded
me. "Have another, Doctor," said the landlord, pointing to the empty
tankard. "How long were you in Macassar?" The doctor turned briskly to
his old friend, and began some chaff.
4
Ferguson, who had just come into port with a damaged propeller shaft, was
telling us how it was. This was his first expansive experience, and
there could be no doubt the engine-room staff of the _Torrington_ had
behaved very well. The underwriters had recognized that, and handsomely,
at a special meeting at Cornhill. Though Ferguson was young for a chief
engineer, his professional elders, who were listening to him, showed some
critical appreciation of the way he solved his problem. He was sitting
at a table of the _Negro Boy_, drawing a diagram on it, and they stood
round.
"There. That was where it was. You see what we had to do. It would not
have been so bad in calm weather, but we were labouring heavily, all the
way from Savannah. Our old man did not think it possible to do it. But
it was no good waiting for something worse to happen."
The matter grew too technical for me. There was cargo jettisoned, and
ballast tanks emptied aft. The stern of the _Torrington_ was lifted so
that her propeller at intervals was clear. Ferguson then went overside
on life-lines. When he was not submerged, he was trying to put his ship
right again; and when he became exhausted, one of his colleagues took his
place, to see whether, while escaping drowning, he could continue the
work of salvation. They all escaped, and the _Torrington_ put back to
Tampa for repairs, which her own engineers accomplished.
The demonstration was over, and Ferguson's story was lapsing into general
gossip. The party of men began to dissolve.
"Who do you think I saw at Tampa?" Ferguson asked Macandrew. "Old Purdy."
"What?" cried Macandrew. "Is he alive?"
Ferguson laughed. "Just about. What's he been doing? I thought he had
chucked the sea. It was in the Customs Office. I'd been there to make a
declaration, and in one of those long corridors there he stood, all
alone, with his hat in his hand, perhaps cooling his head. I hardly knew
him. He's more miserable than ever."
"Did he say anything?" asked Macandrew.
"About as much as usual. I didn't know him at first. He seemed rather
ill. The temples of that high forehead of his were knotted with veins.
It nearly gave me a headache to look at him."
Several of us were impelled to ask a number of questions, but Ferguson
was listening now, with the detachment of youth, to the end of a bawdy
story that two men were laughing over. This had already displaced Purdy
in his mind.
"Didn't he say anything at all? Didn't he mention Hanson?" we asked
Ferguson.
"Eh? What, old Purdy? I don't think so. I don't remember. Now you
mention it, I think I did hear somewhere that Hanson was with Purdy. But
I don't believe he said anything about him. I was just going to ask him
to come and have a drink, when he said good-bye. All I know is I saw him
standing there like a sorrowful saint. Then he walked off slowly down
the corridor. He's a sociable beggar. I couldn't help laughing at him."
5
There was a notice in the window of the _Negro Boy_, and I discovered
that the tavern was under Entirely New Management. The picture sign over
the principal door had been renewed. The mythical little figure which
had given the public-house its name was no longer lost in the soot of
half a century. He was now an obvious negro boy, resplendent in a golden
coat. The reticence of the green window-curtains had become a bright
vacancy of mirrors, and the tavern was modern within. Reform had
destroyed the exclusiveness of the saloon bar; instead of privacy,
distant mirrors astonished you with glimpses of your own head which were
incredible and embarrassing in their novelty. The table-tops were of
white marble supported on gilded iron. The prints and lithographs of
ships had gone from the walls, and were replaced by real pictures
converted to the advertisement of various whiskies--pictures of
battleships, bull-dogs, Scotsmen, and figures in armour tempted from
their ancient posts in baronial halls, after midnight, to finish the
precious drink forgotten by the guests. In accordance with this
transformation the young lady in attendance at the bar was in neat black
and white, with her hair as compact and precise as a resolution at a
public meeting which had been passed even by the women present. She was
severe and decisive, and without recognition of anything there but the
tariff of the house, and sold her refreshments as in a simple yet
exacting ritual which she despised, but knew to be righteous.
It was many months since I had been there. Macandrew was no nearer than
Rotterdam, and perhaps would not see London that voyage. There had been
a long period in which change had been at work at the docks, even to
their improvement, but through it all not one of my old friends had
returned home. They had approached no nearer than Falmouth, the
Hartlepools, or Antwerp, with a slender chance that they would come to
the Thames, and next we heard of them when they were bound outwards once
more, and for a period known not even to their wives. The new _Negro
Boy_ had not the appearance of a place where I could expect to find a
friend, and I was leaving it again, instantly, when a tall figure rose in
a corner waving a reassuring hand. I did not recognize the man, but
thought I knew his smile, which made me look at him in dawning hope. The
grin, evidently knowing its power, was maintained till I saw it
indubitably as Hanson's. He made a remembered gesture with his
spectacles. "I was just about sick of this place," he said. "I've
waited here for an hour hoping somebody would turn up. Where's Macandrew
now?"
"In Rotterdam. I don't think he will be home this voyage."
"And what's happened to this house? Where's the old man?"
"You know all I know about it. I haven't been here for nearly a year.
We must expect progress to make things better than they were. Where have
you come from?"
"I'm running between Liverpool and Baltimore now, in the Planets.
They're comfortable ships, but I don't admire the Western ocean. It's
too savage and cold. How is Macandrew? I came up from Liverpool because
I felt I must see him again. I heard he was here."
From the way he talked, I thought he preferred those subjects requiring
the least effort for a casual occasion. "Now and then," I had to tell
him, "some of us have wondered what happened to the _Cygnet_."
Hanson's smile became effulgent. My remark might have reminded him of a
most enjoyable joke, but he made no sign, while enjoying it privately,
that he intended to share it with me at any time.
"There was a _Cygnet_, wasn't there?" he asked, when my patience had
nearly gone. "I should like somebody to confirm it. The reason I came
to this house tonight, to be candid, was just to see this room again, to
settle a doubt I had. Didn't Macandrew stand over there, and show
concern because a fair, plump woman wasn't quick enough with his beer?"
I admitted this, as an encouragement. "But when I got here tonight,"
continued Hanson, "the change made me feel my mind had lost hold. I must
say it's a relief to see you."
"Has this anything to do with the _Cygnet_?" I asked.
"Everything. I had the time of my life. I wouldn't have missed it for
anything. But somehow, now and then, I want to be quite sure I had it
myself, and not some other fellow." He beamed with the very remembrance
of the experience, and nodded his head at me. He leaned over the table
to me in confidence. "Have you ever been to the tropics? I don't mean
calling at Colombo or Rio. I mean the back of things where there's a
remarkable sun experimenting with low life and hardly anybody looking on.
If ever you get the chance, you take it. It alters all your ideas of
time and space. You begin to learn what stuff life is made of when you
see a tropical forest, and see nothing else for months. On the other
hand," he said, "you become nothing. You see it doesn't matter to others
what happens to you, and you don't care much what happens to others."
"You don't care? It doesn't matter?" I said in doubt to this young
mathematician and philosopher, who had been experimenting with life.
"Isn't that merely romantic?"
"Romance--romance be damned! I got down to the facts."
"Well, get me down to them. I should like the facts. I want to hear
what this strange voyage was like."
"As you know," Hanson assured me, "I went out merely to see what would
happen to myself, in certain circumstances. I knew I was going to be
scared, and I was. There is a place called Tabacol on the river, and we
anchored there after our ocean passage for more than a week. I don't
know why, and it was no use asking Purdy. Probably he didn't know. I
had made up my mind to make the engines move and stop, whenever ordered,
and then see where we are. Anyway, after the racket of the sea voyage,
when the engines stopped at Tabacol the utter silence was as if something
which had been waiting there for you at once pounced. The quiet was of
an awful weight. I could hardly breathe, and chanced to look at the
thermometer. It stood at 132 degrees. I don't know how I got outside,
but when I came to I was on my back on deck, and Jessie was looking after
me. I remember wondering then how a big, fleshy woman like her could
stand it, and felt almost as sorry for her as I did for myself."
"Did she look ill?"
"Jessie? Oh, I don't know. She looked as if she might have been having
a merrier time. Well, we left Tabacol, and I felt we were leaving
everything we knew behind us. I got the idea, in the first day on the
river, that we were quite lost, and were only pushing the old _Cygnet_
along to keep up our spirits. We crawled close under the walls of the
forest. Our vessel looked about as large and important as a leaf adrift.
That place is so immense that I saw we were going to make no impression
on it. It wouldn't matter to anybody but ourselves if it swallowed us
up. On the first day I saw a round head and two yellow eyes in it,
watching us go by. The thought went through my mind: 'a jaguar.' The
watching face vanished on the instant, and I always felt afterwards that
the forest knew all about us, but wouldn't let us know anything. I got
the idea that it wasn't of the least use going on, unless we didn't
intend to treat the job seriously. If we were serious about it then it
was evident we ought to turn back."
"Didn't the skipper ever say what he thought of it?"
"What could Purdy think, or do? There was that river, and the forest on
both sides of it, and the sun over us. Nothing else but the quiet; and
we didn't know where our destination was. We anchored every evening,
close to the bank. One evening, as we anchored, a shower of arrows
clattered about us. There was just one shower, out of the trees, or out
of the clouds."
"What was Jessie doing all this time?" I ventured to ask him.
"Why, what was any one doing? She wasn't an anxiety of my department. I
suppose she was there for the only reason I had--because she asked for
it. It was the same next day, except that instead of more arrows we
found a python in the bunkers. Came aboard over the hawsers, I suppose.
We were a lively lunatic asylum below while killing it with fire-shovels
and crowbars. That was what the voyage was like. The whole lot of it
was the same, and you knew quite well that the farther you went the less
anything mattered. There were slight variations each day of snakes,
mosquitoes, and fevers, to keep you from feeling dead already."
"I've often wondered," I confessed, thinking to bring Hanson to something
I wanted to hear, "what happened to your company. Once we had a word of
Purdy, but never of Jessie or of you."
"Well, now I'm telling you. But you'd have been past wondering if you'd
been with us. Purdy wasn't companionable. He'd tell me it was hot. And
it was. You could feel that yourself. Jessie cooked our meals. Her
galley could have been only a shade better than the engine-room. She
began to look rather faded. At last I was the only one who hadn't been
down with fever. We crawled on and on, and the only question was where
we ourselves would end, for the forest and the river were never going to.
But you didn't care. I'd never been better in my life, and here was the
thing I'd always wanted to see. I could have gone on for ever like that,
wondering what we should see round the next corner.
"Our big troubles were to come. Up to then, we hadn't run into anything
really drastic after turning a corner. I suppose we had had about a
month of it, and God knows where we were, but we had nobody to ask; and
then we ran on a sandbar. The jungle met overhead. We were in what was
only a dark drain through the forest. So this, I thought, is where we
throw in our hand. We might as well have been in another planet for all
the chance we had of getting away from that place. We were aground for
two days; the river then rose a foot, and we came off. The men were
complaining among themselves by then. I heard them talking to each other
about chucking it. It was bound to come. This day they went aft in a
body to Purdy. There stood Purdy, a little object in white against the
gloom of the forest, and he looked about as futile as the last match in a
wind at night. He stood fingering a beard he had grown. One of the men
was beginning to talk truculently at him. Just then Jessie appeared from
below, between me and the group. She had been down with fever for some
days, and she surprised me as much as a ghost. She looked rather like
one, too. She stood watching Purdy, without moving. He didn't look at
her, though he must have known she was there. I'm pretty sure we had to
thank her for what happened to us afterwards, for it was then that Purdy
began shaking his finger at that big stoker who was shouting. I'd never
seen him with such an expression before. As near as he could be wild, he
was. 'We're going on,' said Purdy to them very distinctly. 'This ship
continues her voyage. If you want to leave her here, I'll put you
ashore.' He walked away some paces, and came back to the men. Then he
said something more in his usual voice. 'Do you men tell me you're
afraid of the job? I don't believe it. It can be done. We'll do it.
We'll do it. Mr. Hanson,' he called out, 'we are ready to get under way.
Would you please stand by?'
"The men never said another word. They went for'ard. It was very
curious, but after that they behaved as though they had another skipper.
Yet they were properly frightened by what they thought was ahead of them.
My lot below were always asking me about it, and I handed them the usual
ornamental and soothing lies, in which they believed long enough to keep
the steam up. What more could you ask of human nature? So we kept her
plugging along, getting nearer and nearer nowhere. We turned another of
those dramatic corners, later on, though I forget how much later, and
ahead of us the river was piled high with rocks, and was tumbling from
above. The _Cygnet_ had had her fair share of luck, but luck could not
get her over that. We were all looking at the white water ahead, and
feeling--at least I was--that we were being laughed at, when I heard
Purdy call me, and turned round. He was hurrying towards me round the
gear, and I thought from the look of him that this complete frustration
had turned his mind. He signed for me to follow him, and I did it,
wondering what we should do with a lunatic added to all the rest of it.
I followed him into his cabin. 'What can I do?' he said, and bent over
his berth, 'what can I do?'
"Jessie was curled up on her side in his berth, and there was nothing
anyone could do. I didn't know she was alive. But she half opened her
eyes, without looking up, and her hand began moving towards Purdy. 'That
you, Bill?' she said. Purdy flopped down beside her. I got out.
"So I took over for a bit--the mate was no good--and waited for the next
thing. That affair disheartened the men a lot, and I took it for
granted, from their faces as they stood round that figure in a tarpaulin
under a tree in the forest, that we were witnessing the end. There was
Purdy, too . . . you couldn't expect much from him after a funeral."
Hanson bent over the table, and began tapping it with a finger, and spoke
slowly through a surprise he still felt. "Old Purdy came to me the
following morning, and told me what he intended to do. What do you
think? He reckoned that, though we were still a hundred miles from the
headquarters of the consignees, an outpost was probably no farther than
just above the falls. He himself was going to prospect, for there should
be a native trail through the woods, past the rapids; and he left me in
charge.
"Macandrew was all wrong about that fellow. In two days he was back. He
had found an outpost, four miles above, but nobody was there, so we could
get no help. He was going to land our cargo of a ton and a half of
machinery, and place it on the company's territory above the falls. 'You
can see for yourself,' Purdy said to me pathetically, 'that I can't
deliver the _Cygnet_ there. But I think I am right in making her secure
and leaving her here, and reporting it. What else can I do? They ought
to give me a clean receipt.'
"It was funny enough, that anxiety about a ship and machinery where there
was nothing but monkeys and parrots, but I agreed with him, and we got to
work landing those packages of mining gear, which only an expert could
understand, in a place where nothing was likely to happen till the Last
Day. The way we sweated over it! And then warped the stuff with snatch
blocks through four miles of jungle. Yes; and buried two men of our
company on the way. But we did get the cargo on to the company's damned
land at last, and a nice lot of half-naked scarecrows we looked, with
nothing to fill our hollow cheeks but whiskers. There the name of the
place was all right, 'Tres Irmaos,' painted over a shed. The shed was
falling to pieces. There was nobody about. Nothing but a little open
space, and the forest around, and the sun blazing down at us.
"We pushed on for headquarters, Purdy leading us. A hundred miles to go!
I don't know how we did it. Three more died, including the mate, but we
didn't bury those. Purdy kept on the move. He told me, after an
eternity, that it was just ahead of us, and at last we did come to some
other men. They were Colombians. We astonished them, but nothing could
astonish us any more. Purdy learned that he had got to our ultimate
destination all right. Then some fellow appeared, in a gaudy uniform and
a sword, who spoke English. When Purdy asked to be taken to the manager
of the company, this gay chap laughed fiercely, and kept looking at Purdy
in triumph. 'Him?' he shouted, when he had got enough fun out of it,
'im? He's dead. We execute him. All those people--they go. No more
company. All finish. No good.' He was very bright about it.
"Purdy never said a word. All he did was to turn to me, and then stare
beyond me with big eyes at something which couldn't possibly have been
there."