"While he was telling me all this,"--Marlow changed his tone--"I
marvelled even more. It was as if misfortune marked its victims on the
forehead for the dislike of the crowd. I am not thinking here of
numbers. Two men may behave like a crowd, three certainly will when
their emotions are engaged. It was as if the forehead of Flora de Barral
were marked. Was the girl born to be a victim; to be always disliked and
crushed as if she were too fine for this world? Or too luckless--since
that also is often counted as sin.
Yes, I marvelled more since I knew more of the girl than Mr. Powell--if
only her true name; and more of Captain Anthony--if only the fact that he
was the son of a delicate erotic poet of a markedly refined and
autocratic temperament. Yes, I knew their joint stories which Mr. Powell
did not know. The chapter in it he was opening to me, the sea-chapter,
with such new personages as the sentimental and apoplectic chief-mate and
the morose steward, however astounding to him in its detached condition
was much more so to me as a member of a series, following the chapter
outside the Eastern Hotel in which I myself had played my part. In view
of her declarations and my sage remarks it was very unexpected. She had
meant well, and I had certainly meant well too. Captain Anthony--as far
as I could gather from little Fyne--had meant well. As far as such lofty
words may be applied to the obscure personages of this story we were all
filled with the noblest sentiments and intentions. The sea was there to
give them the shelter of its solitude free from the earth's petty
suggestions. I could well marvel in myself, as to what had happened.
I hope that if he saw it, Mr. Powell forgave me the smile of which I was
guilty at that moment. The light in the cabin of his little cutter was
dim. And the smile was dim too. Dim and fleeting. The girl's life had
presented itself to me as a tragi-comical adventure, the saddest thing on
earth, slipping between frank laughter and unabashed tears. Yes, the
saddest facts and the most common, and, being common perhaps the most
worthy of our unreserved pity.
The purely human reality is capable of lyrism but not of abstraction.
Nothing will serve for its understanding but the evidence of rational
linking up of characters and facts. And beginning with Flora de Barral,
in the light of my memories I was certain that she at least must have
been passive; for that is of necessity the part of women, this waiting on
fate which some of them, and not the most intelligent, cover up by the
vain appearances of agitation. Flora de Barral was not exceptionally
intelligent but she was thoroughly feminine. She would be passive (and
that does not mean inanimate) in the circumstances, where the mere fact
of being a woman was enough to give her an occult and supreme
significance. And she would be enduring which is the essence of woman's
visible, tangible power. Of that I was certain. Had she not endured
already? Yet it is so true that the germ of destruction lies in wait for
us mortals, even at the very source of our strength, that one may die of
too much endurance as well as of too little of it.
Such was my train of thought. And I was mindful also of my first view of
her--toying or perhaps communing in earnest with the possibilities of a
precipice. But I did not ask Mr. Powell anxiously what had happened to
Mrs. Anthony in the end. I let him go on in his own way feeling that no
matter what strange facts he would have to disclose, I was certain to
know much more of them than he ever did know or could possibly guess
. . . "
Marlow paused for quite a long time. He seemed uncertain as though he
had advanced something beyond my grasp. Purposely I made no sign. "You
understand?" he asked.
"Perfectly," I said. "You are the expert in the psychological
wilderness. This is like one of those Red-skin stories where the noble
savages carry off a girl and the honest backwoodsman with his
incomparable knowledge follows the track and reads the signs of her fate
in a footprint here, a broken twig there, a trinket dropped by the way. I
have always liked such stories. Go on."
Marlow smiled indulgently at my jesting. "It is not exactly a story for
boys," he said. "I go on then. The sign, as you call it, was not very
plentiful but very much to the purpose, and when Mr. Powell heard (at a
certain moment I felt bound to tell him) when he heard that I had known
Mrs. Anthony before her marriage, that, to a certain extent, I was her
confidant . . . For you can't deny that to a certain extent . . . Well
let us say that I had a look in . . . A young girl, you know, is
something like a temple. You pass by and wonder what mysterious rites
are going on in there, what prayers, what visions? The privileged men,
the lover, the husband, who are given the key of the sanctuary do not
always know how to use it. For myself, without claim, without merit,
simply by chance I had been allowed to look through the half-opened door
and I had seen the saddest possible desecration, the withered brightness
of youth, a spirit neither made cringing nor yet dulled but as if
bewildered in quivering hopelessness by gratuitous cruelty;
self-confidence destroyed and, instead, a resigned recklessness, a
mournful callousness (and all this simple, almost naive)--before the
material and moral difficulties of the situation. The passive anguish of
the luckless!
I asked myself: wasn't that ill-luck exhausted yet? Ill-luck which is
like the hate of invisible powers interpreted, made sensible and
injurious by the actions of men?
Mr. Powell as you may well imagine had opened his eyes at my statement.
But he was full of his recalled experiences on board the _Ferndale_, and
the strangeness of being mixed up in what went on aboard, simply because
his name was also the name of a shipping-master, kept him in a state of
wonder which made other coincidences, however unlikely, not so very
surprising after all.
This astonishing occurrence was so present to his mind that he always
felt as though he were there under false pretences. And this feeling was
so uncomfortable that it nerved him to break through the awe-inspiring
aloofness of his captain. He wanted to make a clean breast of it. I
imagine that his youth stood in good stead to Mr. Powell. Oh, yes. Youth
is a power. Even Captain Anthony had to take some notice of it, as if it
refreshed him to see something untouched, unscarred, unhardened by
suffering. Or perhaps the very novelty of that face, on board a ship
where he had seen the same faces for years, attracted his attention.
Whether one day he dropped a word to his new second officer or only
looked at him I don't know; but Mr. Powell seized the opportunity
whatever it was. The captain who had started and stopped in his
everlasting rapid walk smoothed his brow very soon, heard him to the end
and then laughed a little.
"Ah! That's the story. And you felt you must put me right as to this."
"Yes, sir."
"It doesn't matter how you came on board," said Anthony. And then
showing that perhaps he was not so utterly absent from his ship as
Franklin supposed: "That's all right. You seem to be getting on very
well with everybody," he said in his curt hurried tone, as if talking
hurt him, and his eyes already straying over the sea as usual.
"Yes, sir."
Powell tells me that looking then at the strong face to which that
haggard expression was returning, he had the impulse, from some confused
friendly feeling, to add: "I am very happy on board here, sir."
The quickly returning glance, its steadiness, abashed Mr. Powell and made
him even step back a little. The captain looked as though he had
forgotten the meaning of the word.
"You--what? Oh yes . . . You . . . of course . . . Happy. Why not?"
This was merely muttered; and next moment Anthony was off on his headlong
tramp his eyes turned to the sea away from his ship.
A sailor indeed looks generally into the great distances, but in Captain
Anthony's case there was--as Powell expressed it--something particular,
something purposeful like the avoidance of pain or temptation. It was
very marked once one had become aware of it. Before, one felt only a
pronounced strangeness. Not that the captain--Powell was careful to
explain--didn't see things as a ship-master should. The proof of it was
that on that very occasion he desired him suddenly after a period of
silent pacing, to have all the staysails sheets eased off, and he was
going on with some other remarks on the subject of these staysails when
Mrs. Anthony followed by her father emerged from the companion. She
established herself in her chair to leeward of the skylight as usual.
Thereupon the captain cut short whatever he was going to say, and in a
little while went down below.
I asked Mr. Powell whether the captain and his wife never conversed on
deck. He said no--or at any rate they never exchanged more than a couple
of words. There was some constraint between them. For instance, on that
very occasion, when Mrs. Anthony came out they did look at each other;
the captain's eyes indeed followed her till she sat down; but he did not
speak to her; he did not approach her; and afterwards left the deck
without turning his head her way after this first silent exchange of
glances.
I asked Mr. Powell what did he do then, the captain being out of the way.
"I went over and talked to Mrs. Anthony. I was thinking that it must be
very dull for her. She seemed to be such a stranger to the ship."
"The father was there of course?"
"Always," said Powell. "He was always there sitting on the skylight, as
if he were keeping watch over her. And I think," he added, "that he was
worrying her. Not that she showed it in any way. Mrs. Anthony was
always very quiet and always ready to look one straight in the face."
"You talked together a lot?" I pursued my inquiries. "She mostly let me
talk to her," confessed Mr. Powell. "I don't know that she was very much
interested--but still she let me. She never cut me short."
All the sympathies of Mr. Powell were for Flora Anthony nee de Barral.
She was the only human being younger than himself on board that ship
since the _Ferndale_ carried no boys and was manned by a full crew of
able seamen. Yes! their youth had created a sort of bond between them.
Mr. Powell's open countenance must have appeared to her distinctly
pleasing amongst the mature, rough, crabbed or even inimical faces she
saw around her. With the warm generosity of his age young Powell was on
her side, as it were, even before he knew that there were sides to be
taken on board that ship, and what this taking sides was about. There
was a girl. A nice girl. He asked himself no questions. Flora de
Barral was not so much younger in years than himself; but for some
reason, perhaps by contrast with the accepted idea of a captain's wife,
he could not regard her otherwise but as an extremely youthful creature.
At the same time, apart from her exalted position, she exercised over him
the supremacy a woman's earlier maturity gives her over a young man of
her own age. As a matter of fact we can see that, without ever having
more than a half an hour's consecutive conversation together, and the
distances duly preserved, these two were becoming friends--under the eye
of the old man, I suppose.
How he first got in touch with his captain's wife Powell relates in this
way. It was long before his memorable conversation with the mate and
shortly after getting clear of the channel. It was gloomy weather; dead
head wind, blowing quite half a gale; the _Ferndale_ under reduced sail
was stretching close-hauled across the track of the homeward bound ships,
just moving through the water and no more, since there was no object in
pressing her and the weather looked threatening. About ten o'clock at
night he was alone on the poop, in charge, keeping well aft by the
weather rail and staring to windward, when amongst the white, breaking
seas, under the black sky, he made out the lights of a ship. He watched
them for some time. She was running dead before the wind of course. She
will pass jolly close--he said to himself; and then suddenly he felt a
great mistrust of that approaching ship. She's heading straight for
us--he thought. It was not his business to get out of the way. On the
contrary. And his uneasiness grew by the recollection of the forty tons
of dynamite in the body of the _Ferndale_; not the sort of cargo one
thinks of with equanimity in connection with a threatened collision. He
gazed at the two small lights in the dark immensity filled with the angry
noise of the seas. They fascinated him till their plainness to his sight
gave him a conviction that there was danger there. He knew in his mind
what to do in the emergency, but very properly he felt that he must call
the captain out at once.
He crossed the deck in one bound. By the immemorial custom and usage of
the sea the captain's room is on the starboard side. You would just as
soon expect your captain to have his nose at the back of his head as to
have his state-room on the port side of the ship. Powell forgot all
about the direction on that point given him by the chief. He flew over
as I said, stamped with his foot and then putting his face to the cowl of
the big ventilator shouted down there: "Please come on deck, sir," in a
voice which was not trembling or scared but which we may call fairly
expressive. There could not be a mistake as to the urgence of the call.
But instead of the expected alert "All right!" and the sound of a rush
down there, he heard only a faint exclamation--then silence.
Think of his astonishment! He remained there, his ear in the cowl of the
ventilator, his eyes fastened on those menacing sidelights dancing on the
gusts of wind which swept the angry darkness of the sea. It was as
though he had waited an hour but it was something much less than a minute
before he fairly bellowed into the wide tube "Captain Anthony!" An
agitated "What is it?" was what he heard down there in Mrs. Anthony's
voice, light rapid footsteps . . . Why didn't she try to wake him up! "I
want the captain," he shouted, then gave it up, making a dash at the
companion where a blue light was kept, resolved to act for himself.
On the way he glanced at the helmsman whose face lighted up by the
binnacle lamps was calm. He said rapidly to him: "Stand by to spin that
helm up at the first word." The answer "Aye, aye, sir," was delivered in
a steady voice. Then Mr. Powell after a shout for the watch on deck to
"lay aft," ran to the ship's side and struck the blue light on the rail.
A sort of nasty little spitting of sparks was all that came. The light
(perhaps affected by damp) had failed to ignite. The time of all these
various acts must be counted in seconds. Powell confessed to me that at
this failure he experienced a paralysis of thought, of voice, of limbs.
The unexpectedness of this misfire positively overcame his faculties. It
was the only thing for which his imagination was not prepared. It was
knocked clean over. When it got up it was with the suggestion that he
must do something at once or there would be a broadside smash accompanied
by the explosion of dynamite, in which both ships would be blown up and
every soul on board of them would vanish off the earth in an enormous
flame and uproar.
He saw the catastrophe happening and at the same moment, before he could
open his mouth or stir a limb to ward off the vision, a voice very near
his ear, the measured voice of Captain Anthony said: "Wouldn't light--eh?
Throw it down! Jump for the flare-up."
The spring of activity in Mr. Powell was released with great force. He
jumped. The flare-up was kept inside the companion with a box of matches
ready to hand. Almost before he knew he had moved he was diving under
the companion slide. He got hold of the can in the dark and tried to
strike a light. But he had to press the flare-holder to his breast with
one arm, his fingers were damp and stiff, his hands trembled a little.
One match broke. Another went out. In its flame he saw the colourless
face of Mrs. Anthony a little below him, standing on the cabin stairs.
Her eyes which were very close to his (he was in a crouching posture on
the top step) seemed to burn darkly in the vanishing light. On deck the
captain's voice was heard sudden and unexpectedly sardonic: "You had
better look sharp, if you want to be in time."
"Let me have the box," said Mrs. Anthony in a hurried and familiar
whisper which sounded amused as if they had been a couple of children up
to some lark behind a wall. He was glad of the offer which seemed to him
very natural, and without ceremony--
"Here you are. Catch hold."
Their hands touched in the dark and she took the box while he held the
paraffin soaked torch in its iron holder. He thought of warning her:
"Look out for yourself." But before he had the time to finish the
sentence the flare blazed up violently between them and he saw her throw
herself back with an arm across her face. "Hallo," he exclaimed; only he
could not stop a moment to ask if she was hurt. He bolted out of the
companion straight into his captain who took the flare from him and held
it high above his head.
The fierce flame fluttered like a silk flag, throwing an angry swaying
glare mingled with moving shadows over the poop, lighting up the concave
surfaces of the sails, gleaming on the wet paint of the white rails. And
young Powell turned his eyes to windward with a catch in his breath.
The strange ship, a darker shape in the night, did not seem to be moving
onwards but only to grow more distinct right abeam, staring at the
_Ferndale_ with one green and one red eye which swayed and tossed as if
they belonged to the restless head of some invisible monster ambushed in
the night amongst the waves. A moment, long like eternity, elapsed, and,
suddenly, the monster which seemed to take to itself the shape of a
mountain shut its green eye without as much as a preparatory wink.
Mr. Powell drew a free breath. "All right now," said Captain Anthony in
a quiet undertone. He gave the blazing flare to Powell and walked aft to
watch the passing of that menace of destruction coming blindly with its
parti-coloured stare out of a blind night on the wings of a sweeping
wind. Her very form could be distinguished now black and elongated
amongst the hissing patches of foam bursting along her path.
As is always the case with a ship running before wind and sea she did not
seem to an onlooker to move very fast; but to be progressing indolently
in long leisurely bounds and pauses in the midst of the overtaking waves.
It was only when actually passing the stern within easy hail of the
_Ferndale_, that her headlong speed became apparent to the eye. With the
red light shut off and soaring like an immense shadow on the crest of a
wave she was lost to view in one great, forward swing, melting into the
lightless space.
"Close shave," said Captain Anthony in an indifferent voice just raised
enough to be heard in the wind. "A blind lot on board that ship. Put
out the flare now."
Silently Mr. Powell inverted the holder, smothering the flame in the can,
bringing about by the mere turn of his wrist the fall of darkness upon
the poop. And at the same time vanished out of his mind's eye the vision
of another flame enormous and fierce shooting violently from a white
churned patch of the sea, lighting up the very clouds and carrying
upwards in its volcanic rush flying spars, corpses, the fragments of two
destroyed ships. It vanished and there was an immense relief. He told
me he did not know how scared he had been, not generally but of that very
thing his imagination had conjured, till it was all over. He measured it
(for fear is a great tension) by the feeling of slack weariness which
came over him all at once.
He walked to the companion and stooping low to put the flare in its usual
place saw in the darkness the motionless pale oval of Mrs. Anthony's
face. She whispered quietly:
"Is anything going to happen? What is it?"
"It's all over now," he whispered back.
He remained bent low, his head inside the cover staring at that white
ghostly oval. He wondered she had not rushed out on deck. She had
remained quietly there. This was pluck. Wonderful self-restraint. And
it was not stupidity on her part. She knew there was imminent danger and
probably had some notion of its nature.
"You stayed here waiting for what would come," he murmured admiringly.
"Wasn't that the best thing to do?" she asked.
He didn't know. Perhaps. He confessed he could not have done it. Not
he. His flesh and blood could not have stood it. He would have felt he
must see what was coming. Then he remembered that the flare might have
scorched her face, and expressed his concern.
"A bit. Nothing to hurt. Smell the singed hair?"
There was a sort of gaiety in her tone. She might have been frightened
but she certainly was not overcome and suffered from no reaction. This
confirmed and augmented if possible Mr. Powell's good opinion of her as a
"jolly girl," though it seemed to him positively monstrous to refer in
such terms to one's captain's wife. "But she doesn't look it," he
thought in extenuation and was going to say something more to her about
the lighting of that flare when another voice was heard in the companion,
saying some indistinct words. Its tone was contemptuous; it came from
below, from the bottom of the stairs. It was a voice in the cabin. And
the only other voice which could be heard in the main cabin at this time
of the evening was the voice of Mrs. Anthony's father. The indistinct
white oval sank from Mr. Powell's sight so swiftly as to take him by
surprise. For a moment he hung at the opening of the companion and now
that her slight form was no longer obstructing the narrow and winding
staircase the voices came up louder but the words were still indistinct.
The old gentleman was excited about something and Mrs. Anthony was
"managing him" as Powell expressed it. They moved away from the bottom
of the stairs and Powell went away from the companion. Yet he fancied he
had heard the words "Lost to me" before he withdrew his head. They had
been uttered by Mr. Smith.
Captain Anthony had not moved away from the taffrail. He remained in the
very position he took up to watch the other ship go by rolling and
swinging all shadowy in the uproar of the following seas. He stirred
not; and Powell keeping near by did not dare speak to him, so enigmatical
in its contemplation of the night did his figure appear to his young
eyes: indistinct--and in its immobility staring into gloom, the prey of
some incomprehensible grief, longing or regret.
Why is it that the stillness of a human being is often so impressive, so
suggestive of evil--as if our proper fate were a ceaseless agitation? The
stillness of Captain Anthony became almost intolerable to his second
officer. Mr. Powell loitering about the skylight wanted his captain off
the deck now. "Why doesn't he go below?" he asked himself impatiently.
He ventured a cough.
Whether the effect of the cough or not Captain Anthony spoke. He did not
move the least bit. With his back remaining turned to the whole length
of the ship he asked Mr. Powell with some brusqueness if the chief mate
had neglected to instruct him that the captain was to be found on the
port side.
"Yes, sir," said Mr. Powell approaching his back. "The mate told me to
stamp on the port side when I wanted you; but I didn't remember at the
moment."
"You should remember," the captain uttered with an effort. Then added
mumbling "I don't want Mrs. Anthony frightened. Don't you see? . . ."
"She wasn't this time," Powell said innocently: "She lighted the flare-up
for me, sir."
"This time," Captain Anthony exclaimed and turned round. "Mrs. Anthony
lighted the flare? Mrs. Anthony! . . . " Powell explained that she was
in the companion all the time.
"All the time," repeated the captain. It seemed queer to Powell that
instead of going himself to see the captain should ask him:
"Is she there now?"
Powell said that she had gone below after the ship had passed clear of
the _Ferndale_. Captain Anthony made a movement towards the companion
himself, when Powell added the information. "Mr. Smith called to Mrs.
Anthony from the saloon, sir. I believe they are talking there now."
He was surprised to see the captain give up the idea of going below after
all.
He began to walk the poop instead regardless of the cold, of the damp
wind and of the sprays. And yet he had nothing on but his sleeping suit
and slippers. Powell placing himself on the break of the poop kept a
look-out. When after some time he turned his head to steal a glance at
his eccentric captain he could not see his active and shadowy figure
swinging to and fro. The second mate of the _Ferndale_ walked aft
peering about and addressed the seaman who steered.
"Captain gone below?"
"Yes, sir," said the fellow who with a quid of tobacco bulging out his
left cheek kept his eyes on the compass card. "This minute. He
laughed."
"Laughed," repeated Powell incredulously. "Do you mean the captain did?
You must be mistaken. What would he want to laugh for?"
"Don't know, sir."
The elderly sailor displayed a profound indifference towards human
emotions. However, after a longish pause he conceded a few words more to
the second officer's weakness. "Yes. He was walking the deck as usual
when suddenly he laughed a little and made for the companion. Thought of
something funny all at once."
Something funny! That Mr. Powell could not believe. He did not ask
himself why, at the time. Funny thoughts come to men, though, in all
sorts of situations; they come to all sorts of men. Nevertheless Mr.
Powell was shocked to learn that Captain Anthony had laughed without
visible cause on a certain night. The impression for some reason was
disagreeable. And it was then, while finishing his watch, with the
chilly gusts of wind sweeping at him out of the darkness where the short
sea of the soundings growled spitefully all round the ship, that it
occurred to his unsophisticated mind that perhaps things are not what
they are confidently expected to be; that it was possible that Captain
Anthony was not a happy man . . . In so far you will perceive he was to a
certain extent prepared for the apoplectic and sensitive Franklin's
lamentations about his captain. And though he treated them with a
contempt which was in a great measure sincere, yet he admitted to me that
deep down within him an inexplicable and uneasy suspicion that all was
not well in that cabin, so unusually cut off from the rest of the ship,
came into being and grew against his will.