Young Powell thought to himself: "The men, too, are noticing it." Indeed,
the captain's behaviour to his wife and to his wife's father was
noticeable enough. It was as if they had been a pair of not very
congenial passengers. But perhaps it was not always like that. The
captain might have been put out by something.
When the aggrieved Franklin came on deck Mr. Powell made a remark to that
effect. For his curiosity was aroused.
The mate grumbled "Seems to you? . . . Putout? . . . eh?" He buttoned
his thick jacket up to the throat, and only then added a gloomy "Aye,
likely enough," which discouraged further conversation. But no
encouragement would have induced the newly-joined second mate to enter
the way of confidences. His was an instinctive prudence. Powell did not
know why it was he had resolved to keep his own counsel as to his
colloquy with Mr. Smith. But his curiosity did not slumber. Some time
afterwards, again at the relief of watches, in the course of a little
talk, he mentioned Mrs. Anthony's father quite casually, and tried to
find out from the mate who he was.
"It would take a clever man to find that out, as things are on board
now," Mr. Franklin said, unexpectedly communicative. "The first I saw of
him was when she brought him alongside in a four-wheeler one morning
about half-past eleven. The captain had come on board early, and was
down in the cabin that had been fitted out for him. Did I tell you that
if you want the captain for anything you must stamp on the port side of
the deck? That's so. This ship is not only unlike what she used to be,
but she is like no other ship, anyhow. Did you ever hear of the
captain's room being on the port side? Both of them stern cabins have
been fitted up afresh like a blessed palace. A gang of people from some
tip-top West-End house were fussing here on board with hangings and
furniture for a fortnight, as if the Queen were coming with us. Of
course the starboard cabin is the bedroom one, but the poor captain hangs
out to port on a couch, so that in case we want him on deck at night,
Mrs. Anthony should not be startled. Nervous! Phoo! A woman who
marries a sailor and makes up her mind to come to sea should have no
blamed jumpiness about her, I say. But never mind. Directly the old cab
pointed round the corner of the warehouse I called out to the captain
that his lady was coming aboard. He answered me, but as I didn't see him
coming, I went down the gangway myself to help her alight. She jumps out
excitedly without touching my arm, or as much as saying "thank you" or
"good morning" or anything, turns back to the cab, and then that old
joker comes out slowly. I hadn't noticed him inside. I hadn't expected
to see anybody. It gave me a start. She says: "My father--Mr.
Franklin." He was staring at me like an owl. "How do you do, sir?" says
I. Both of them looked funny. It was as if something had happened to
them on the way. Neither of them moved, and I stood by waiting. The
captain showed himself on the poop; and I saw him at the side looking
over, and then he disappeared; on the way to meet them on shore, I
expected. But he just went down below again. So, not seeing him, I
said: "Let me help you on board, sir." "On board!" says he in a silly
fashion. "On board!" "It's not a very good ladder, but it's quite
firm," says I, as he seemed to be afraid of it. And he didn't look a
broken-down old man, either. You can see yourself what he is. Straight
as a poker, and life enough in him yet. But he made no move, and I began
to feel foolish. Then she comes forward. "Oh! Thank you, Mr. Franklin.
I'll help my father up." Flabbergasted me--to be choked off like this.
Pushed in between him and me without as much as a look my way. So of
course I dropped it. What do you think? I fell back. I would have gone
up on board at once and left them on the quay to come up or stay there
till next week, only they were blocking the way. I couldn't very well
shove them on one side. Devil only knows what was up between them. There
she was, pale as death, talking to him very fast. He got as red as a
turkey-cock--dash me if he didn't. A bad-tempered old bloke, I can tell
you. And a bad lot, too. Never mind. I couldn't hear what she was
saying to him, but she put force enough into it to shake her. It
seemed--it seemed, mind!--that he didn't want to go on board. Of course
it couldn't have been that. I know better. Well, she took him by the
arm, above the elbow, as if to lead him, or push him rather. I was
standing not quite ten feet off. Why should I have gone away? I was
anxious to get back on board as soon as they would let me. I didn't want
to overhear her blamed whispering either. But I couldn't stay there for
ever, so I made a move to get past them if I could. And that's how I
heard a few words. It was the old chap--something nasty about being
"under the heel" of somebody or other. Then he says, "I don't want this
sacrifice." What it meant I can't tell. It was a quarrel--of that I am
certain. She looks over her shoulder, and sees me pretty close to them.
I don't know what she found to say into his ear, but he gave way
suddenly. He looked round at me too, and they went up together so
quickly then that when I got on the quarter-deck I was only in time to
see the inner door of the passage close after them. Queer--eh? But if
it were only queerness one wouldn't mind. Some luggage in new trunks
came on board in the afternoon. We undocked at midnight. And may I be
hanged if I know who or what he was or is. I haven't been able to find
out. No, I don't know. He may have been anything. All I know is that
once, years ago when I went to see the Derby with a friend, I saw a pea-
and-thimble chap who looked just like that old mystery father out of a
cab."
All this the goggle-eyed mate had said in a resentful and melancholy
voice, with pauses, to the gentle murmur of the sea. It was for him a
bitter sort of pleasure to have a fresh pair of ears, a newcomer, to whom
he could repeat all these matters of grief and suspicion talked over
endlessly by the band of Captain Anthony's faithful subordinates. It was
evidently so refreshing to his worried spirit that it made him forget the
advisability of a little caution with a complete stranger. But really
with Mr. Powell there was no danger. Amused, at first, at these plaints,
he provoked them for fun. Afterwards, turning them over in his mind, he
became impressed, and as the impression grew stronger with the days his
resolution to keep it to himself grew stronger too.
* * * * *
What made it all the easier to keep--I mean the resolution--was that
Powell's sentiment of amused surprise at what struck him at first as mere
absurdity was not unmingled with indignation. And his years were too
few, his position too novel, his reliance on his own opinion not yet firm
enough to allow him to express it with any effect. And then--what would
have been the use, anyhow--and where was the necessity?
But this thing, familiar and mysterious at the same time, occupied his
imagination. The solitude of the sea intensifies the thoughts and the
facts of one's experience which seems to lie at the very centre of the
world, as the ship which carries one always remains the centre figure of
the round horizon. He viewed the apoplectic, goggle-eyed mate and the
saturnine, heavy-eyed steward as the victims of a peculiar and secret
form of lunacy which poisoned their lives. But he did not give them his
sympathy on that account. No. That strange affliction awakened in him a
sort of suspicious wonder.
Once--and it was at night again; for the officers of the _Ferndale_
keeping watch and watch as was customary in those days, had but few
occasions for intercourse--once, I say, the thick Mr. Franklin, a
quaintly bulky figure under the stars, the usual witnesses of his
outpourings, asked him with an abruptness which was not callous, but in
his simple way:
"I believe you have no parents living?"
Mr. Powell said that he had lost his father and mother at a very early
age.
"My mother is still alive," declared Mr. Franklin in a tone which
suggested that he was gratified by the fact. "The old lady is lasting
well. Of course she's got to be made comfortable. A woman must be
looked after, and, if it comes to that, I say, give me a mother. I dare
say if she had not lasted it out so well I might have gone and got
married. I don't know, though. We sailors haven't got much time to look
about us to any purpose. Anyhow, as the old lady was there I haven't, I
may say, looked at a girl in all my life. Not that I wasn't partial to
female society in my time," he added with a pathetic intonation, while
the whites of his goggle eyes gleamed amorously under the clear night
sky. "Very partial, I may say."
Mr. Powell was amused; and as these communications took place only when
the mate was relieved off duty he had no serious objection to them. The
mate's presence made the first half-hour and sometimes even more of his
watch on deck pass away. If his senior did not mind losing some of his
rest it was not Mr. Powell's affair. Franklin was a decent fellow. His
intention was not to boast of his filial piety.
"Of course I mean respectable female society," he explained. "The other
sort is neither here nor there. I blame no man's conduct, but a well-
brought-up young fellow like you knows that there's precious little fun
to be got out of it." He fetched a deep sigh. "I wish Captain Anthony's
mother had been a lasting sort like my old lady. He would have had to
look after her and he would have done it well. Captain Anthony is a
proper man. And it would have saved him from the most foolish--"
He did not finish the phrase which certainly was turning bitter in his
mouth. Mr. Powell thought to himself: "There he goes again." He laughed
a little.
"I don't understand why you are so hard on the captain, Mr. Franklin. I
thought you were a great friend of his."
Mr. Franklin exclaimed at this. He was not hard on the captain. Nothing
was further from his thoughts. Friend! Of course he was a good friend
and a faithful servant. He begged Powell to understand that if Captain
Anthony chose to strike a bargain with Old Nick to-morrow, and Old Nick
were good to the captain, he (Franklin) would find it in his heart to
love Old Nick for the captain's sake. That was so. On the other hand,
if a saint, an angel with white wings came along and--"
He broke off short again as if his own vehemence had frightened him. Then
in his strained pathetic voice (which he had never raised) he observed
that it was no use talking. Anybody could see that the man was changed.
"As to that," said young Powell, "it is impossible for me to judge."
"Good Lord!" whispered the mate. "An educated, clever young fellow like
you with a pair of eyes on him and some sense too! Is that how a happy
man looks? Eh? Young you may be, but you aren't a kid; and I dare you
to say 'Yes!'"
Mr. Powell did not take up the challenge. He did not know what to think
of the mate's view. Still, it seemed as if it had opened his
understanding in a measure. He conceded that the captain did not look
very well.
"Not very well," repeated the mate mournfully. "Do you think a man with
a face like that can hope to live his life out? You haven't knocked
about long in this world yet, but you are a sailor, you have been in
three or four ships, you say. Well, have you ever seen a shipmaster
walking his own deck as if he did not know what he had underfoot? Have
you? Dam'me if I don't think that he forgets where he is. Of course he
can be no other than a prime seaman; but it's lucky, all the same, he has
me on board. I know by this time what he wants done without being told.
Do you know that I have had no order given me since we left port? Do you
know that he has never once opened his lips to me unless I spoke to him
first? I? His chief officer; his shipmate for full six years, with whom
he had no cross word--not once in all that time. Aye. Not a cross look
even. True that when I do make him speak to me, there is his dear old
self, the quick eye, the kind voice. Could hardly be other to his old
Franklin. But what's the good? Eyes, voice, everything's miles away.
And for all that I take good care never to address him when the poop
isn't clear. Yes! Only we two and nothing but the sea with us. You
think it would be all right; the only chief mate he ever had--Mr.
Franklin here and Mr. Franklin there--when anything went wrong the first
word you would hear about the decks was 'Franklin!'--I am thirteen years
older than he is--you would think it would be all right, wouldn't you?
Only we two on this poop on which we saw each other first--he a young
master--told me that he thought I would suit him very well--we two, and
thirty-one days out at sea, and it's no good! It's like talking to a man
standing on shore. I can't get him back. I can't get at him. I feel
sometimes as if I must shake him by the arm: "Wake up! Wake up! You are
wanted, sir . . . !"
Young Powell recognized the expression of a true sentiment, a thing so
rare in this world where there are so many mutes and so many excellent
reasons even at sea for an articulate man not to give himself away, that
he felt something like respect for this outburst. It was not loud. The
grotesque squat shape, with the knob of the head as if rammed down
between the square shoulders by a blow from a club, moved vaguely in a
circumscribed space limited by the two harness-casks lashed to the front
rail of the poop, without gestures, hands in the pockets of the jacket,
elbows pressed closely to its side; and the voice without resonance,
passed from anger to dismay and back again without a single louder word
in the hurried delivery, interrupted only by slight gasps for air as if
the speaker were being choked by the suppressed passion of his grief.
Mr. Powell, though moved to a certain extent, was by no means carried
away. And just as he thought that it was all over, the other, fidgeting
in the darkness, was heard again explosive, bewildered but not very loud
in the silence of the ship and the great empty peace of the sea.
"They have done something to him! What is it? What can it be? Can't
you guess? Don't you know?"
"Good heavens!" Young Powell was astounded on discovering that this was
an appeal addressed to him. "How on earth can I know?"
"You do talk to that white-faced, black-eyed . . . I've seen you talking
to her more than a dozen times."
Young Powell, his sympathy suddenly chilled, remarked in a disdainful
tone that Mrs. Anthony's eyes were not black.
"I wish to God she had never set them on the captain, whatever colour
they are," retorted Franklin. "She and that old chap with the scraped
jaws who sits over her and stares down at her dead-white face with his
yellow eyes--confound them! Perhaps you will tell us that his eyes are
not yellow?"
Powell, not interested in the colour of Mr. Smith's eyes, made a vague
gesture. Yellow or not yellow, it was all one to him.
The mate murmured to himself. "No. He can't know. No! No more than a
baby. It would take an older head."
"I don't even understand what you mean," observed Mr. Powell coldly.
"And even the best head would be puzzled by such devil-work," the mate
continued, muttering. "Well, I have heard tell of women doing for a man
in one way or another when they got him fairly ashore. But to bring
their devilry to sea and fasten on such a man! . . . It's something I
can't understand. But I can watch. Let them look out--I say!"
His short figure, unable to stoop, without flexibility, could not express
dejection. He was very tired suddenly; he dragged his feet going off the
poop. Before he left it with nearly an hour of his watch below
sacrificed, he addressed himself once more to our young man who stood
abreast of the mizzen rigging in an unreceptive mood expressed by silence
and immobility. He did not regret, he said, having spoken openly on this
very serious matter.
"I don't know about its seriousness, sir," was Mr. Powell's frank answer.
"But if you think you have been telling me something very new you are
mistaken. You can't keep that matter out of your speeches. It's the
sort of thing I've been hearing more or less ever since I came on board."
Mr. Powell, speaking truthfully, did not mean to speak offensively. He
had instincts of wisdom; he felt that this was a serious affair, for it
had nothing to do with reason. He did not want to raise an enemy for
himself in the mate. And Mr. Franklin did not take offence. To Mr.
Powell's truthful statement he answered with equal truth and simplicity
that it was very likely, very likely. With a thing like that (next door
to witchcraft almost) weighing on his mind, the wonder was that he could
think of anything else. The poor man must have found in the restlessness
of his thoughts the illusion of being engaged in an active contest with
some power of evil; for his last words as he went lingeringly down the
poop ladder expressed the quaint hope that he would get him, Powell, "on
our side yet."
Mr. Powell--just imagine a straightforward youngster assailed in this
fashion on the high seas--answered merely by an embarrassed and uneasy
laugh which reflected exactly the state of his innocent soul. The
apoplectic mate, already half-way down, went up again three steps of the
poop ladder. Why, yes. A proper young fellow, the mate expected,
wouldn't stand by and see a man, a good sailor and his own skipper, in
trouble without taking his part against a couple of shore people who--Mr.
Powell interrupted him impatiently, asking what was the trouble?
"What is it you are hinting at?" he cried with an inexplicable
irritation.
"I don't like to think of him all alone down there with these two,"
Franklin whispered impressively. "Upon my word I don't. God only knows
what may be going on there . . . Don't laugh . . . It was bad enough last
voyage when Mrs. Brown had a cabin aft; but now it's worse. It frightens
me. I can't sleep sometimes for thinking of him all alone there, shut
off from us all."
Mrs. Brown was the steward's wife. You must understand that shortly
after his visit to the Fyne cottage (with all its consequences), Anthony
had got an offer to go to the Western Islands, and bring home the cargo
of some ship which, damaged in a collision or a stranding, took refuge in
St. Michael, and was condemned there. Roderick Anthony had connections
which would put such paying jobs in his way. So Flora de Barral had but
a five months' voyage, a mere excursion, for her first trial of sea-life.
And Anthony, dearly trying to be most attentive, had induced this Mrs.
Brown, the wife of his faithful steward, to come along as maid to his
bride. But for some reason or other this arrangement was not continued.
And the mate, tormented by indefinite alarms and forebodings, regretted
it. He regretted that Jane Brown was no longer on board--as a sort of
representative of Captain Anthony's faithful servants, to watch quietly
what went on in that part of the ship this fatal marriage had closed to
their vigilance. That had been excellent. For she was a dependable
woman.
Powell did not detect any particular excellence in what seemed a spying
employment. But in his simplicity he said that he should have thought
Mrs. Anthony would have been glad anyhow to have another woman on board.
He was thinking of the white-faced girlish personality which it seemed to
him ought to have been cared for. The innocent young man always looked
upon the girl as immature; something of a child yet.
"She! glad! Why it was she who had her fired out. She didn't want
anybody around the cabin. Mrs. Brown is certain of it. She told her
husband so. You ask the steward and hear what he has to say about it.
That's why I don't like it. A capable woman who knew her place. But no.
Out she must go. For no fault, mind you. The captain was ashamed to
send her away. But that wife of his--aye the precious pair of them have
got hold of him. I can't speak to him for a minute on the poop without
that thimble-rigging coon coming gliding up. I'll tell you what. I
overheard once--God knows I didn't try to--only he forgot I was on the
other side of the skylight with my sextant--I overheard him--you know how
he sits hanging over her chair and talking away without properly opening
his mouth--yes I caught the word right enough. He was alluding to the
captain as "the jailer." The jail . . . !"
Franklin broke off with a profane execration. A silence reigned for a
long time and the slight, very gentle rolling of the ship slipping before
the N.E. trade-wind seemed to be a soothing device for lulling to sleep
the suspicions of men who trust themselves to the sea.
A deep sigh was heard followed by the mate's voice asking dismally if
that was the way one would speak of a man to whom one wished well? No
better proof of something wrong was needed. Therefore he hoped, as he
vanished at last, that Mr. Powell would be on their side. And this time
Mr. Powell did not answer this hope with an embarrassed laugh.
That young officer was more and more surprised at the nature of the
incongruous revelations coming to him in the surroundings and in the
atmosphere of the open sea. It is difficult for us to understand the
extent, the completeness, the comprehensiveness of his inexperience, for
us who didn't go to sea out of a small private school at the age of
fourteen years and nine months. Leaning on his elbow in the mizzen
rigging and so still that the helmsman over there at the other end of the
poop might have (and he probably did) suspect him of being criminally
asleep on duty, he tried to "get hold of that thing" by some side which
would fit in with his simple notions of psychology. "What the deuce are
they worrying about?" he asked himself in a dazed and contemptuous
impatience. But all the same "jailer" was a funny name to give a man;
unkind, unfriendly, nasty. He was sorry that Mr. Smith was guilty in
that matter because, the truth must be told, he had been to a certain
extent sensible of having been noticed in a quiet manner by the father of
Mrs. Anthony. Youth appreciates that sort of recognition which is the
subtlest form of flattery age can offer. Mr. Smith seized opportunities
to approach him on deck. His remarks were sometimes weird and
enigmatical.
He was doubtless an eccentric old gent. But from that to calling his son-
in-law (whom he never approached on deck) nasty names behind his back was
a long step.