I believe he had seen us out of the window coming off to dine in the
dinghy of a fourteen-ton yawl belonging to Marlow my host and skipper.
We helped the boy we had with us to haul the boat up on the
landing-stage before we went up to the riverside inn, where we found our
new acquaintance eating his dinner in dignified loneliness at the head
of a long table, white and inhospitable like a snow bank.
The red tint of his clear-cut face with trim short black whiskers under
a cap of curly iron-grey hair was the only warm spot in the dinginess of
that room cooled by the cheerless tablecloth. We knew him already by
sight as the owner of a little five-ton cutter, which he sailed alone
apparently, a fellow yachtsman in the unpretending band of fanatics who
cruise at the mouth of the Thames. But the first time he addressed the
waiter sharply as ‘steward’ we knew him at once for a sailor as well as
a yachtsman.
Presently he had occasion to reprove that same waiter for the slovenly
manner in which the dinner was served. He did it with considerable
energy and then turned to us.
“If we at sea,” he declared, “went about our work as people ashore high
and low go about theirs we should never make a living. No one would
employ us. And moreover no ship navigated and sailed in the
happy-go-lucky manner people conduct their business on shore would ever
arrive into port.”
Since he had retired from the sea he had been astonished to discover
that the educated people were not much better than the others. No one
seemed to take any proper pride in his work: from plumbers who were
simply thieves to, say, newspaper men (he seemed to think them a
specially intellectual class) who never by any chance gave a correct
version of the simplest affair. This universal inefficiency of what he
called “the shore gang” he ascribed in general to the want of
responsibility and to a sense of security.
“They see,” he went on, “that no matter what they do this tight little
island won’t turn turtle with them or spring a leak and go to the bottom
with their wives and children.”
From this point the conversation took a special turn relating
exclusively to sea-life. On that subject he got quickly in touch with
Marlow who in his time had followed the sea. They kept up a lively
exchange of reminiscences while I listened. They agreed that the
happiest time in their lives was as youngsters in good ships, with no
care in the world but not to lose a watch below when at sea and not a
moment’s time in going ashore after work hours when in harbour. They
agreed also as to the proudest moment they had known in that calling
which is never embraced on rational and practical grounds, because of
the glamour of its romantic associations. It was the moment when they
had passed successfully their first examination and left the seamanship
Examiner with the little precious slip of blue paper in their hands.
“That day I wouldn’t have called the Queen my cousin,” declared our new
acquaintance enthusiastically.
At that time the Marine Board examinations took place at the Saint
Katherine’s Dock House on Tower Hill, and he informed us that he had a
special affection for the view of that historic locality, with the
Gardens to the left, the front of the Mint to the right, the miserable
tumble-down little houses farther away, a cabstand, boot-blacks
squatting on the edge of the pavement and a pair of big policemen gazing
with an air of superiority at the doors of the Black Horse public-house
across the road. This was the part of the world, he said, his eyes
first took notice of, on the finest day of his life. He had emerged
from the main entrance of Saint Katherine’s Dock House a full-fledged
second mate after the hottest time of his life with Captain R—, the
most dreaded of the three seamanship Examiners who at the time were
responsible for the merchant service officers qualifying in the Port of
London.
“We all who were preparing to pass,” he said, “used to shake in our
shoes at the idea of going before him. He kept me for an hour and a
half in the torture chamber and behaved as though he hated me. He kept
his eyes shaded with one of his hands. Suddenly he let it drop saying,
‘You will do!’ Before I realised what he meant he was pushing the blue
slip across the table. I jumped up as if my chair had caught fire.
“‘Thank you, sir,’ says I, grabbing the paper.
“‘Good morning, good luck to you,’ he growls at me.
“The old doorkeeper fussed out of the cloak-room with my hat. They
always do. But he looked very hard at me before he ventured to ask in a
sort of timid whisper: ‘Got through all right, sir?’ For all answer I
dropped a half-crown into his soft broad palm. ‘Well,’ says he with a
sudden grin from ear to ear, ‘I never knew him keep any of you gentlemen
so long. He failed two second mates this morning before your turn came.
Less than twenty minutes each: that’s about his usual time.’
“I found myself downstairs without being aware of the steps as if I had
floated down the staircase. The finest day in my life. The day you get
your first command is nothing to it. For one thing a man is not so
young then and for another with us, you know, there is nothing much more
to expect. Yes, the finest day of one’s life, no doubt, but then it is
just a day and no more. What comes after is about the most unpleasant
time for a youngster, the trying to get an officer’s berth with nothing
much to show but a brand-new certificate. It is surprising how useless
you find that piece of ass’s skin that you have been putting yourself in
such a state about. It didn’t strike me at the time that a Board of
Trade certificate does not make an officer, not by a long long way. But
the skippers of the ships I was haunting with demands for a job knew
that very well. I don’t wonder at them now, and I don’t blame them
either. But this ‘trying to get a ship’ is pretty hard on a youngster
all the same....”
He went on then to tell us how tired he was and how discouraged by this
lesson of disillusion following swiftly upon the finest day of his life.
He told us how he went the round of all the ship-owners’ offices in the
City where some junior clerk would furnish him with printed forms of
application which he took home to fill up in the evening. He used to
run out just before midnight to post them in the nearest pillar-box.
And that was all that ever came of it. In his own words: he might just
as well have dropped them all properly addressed and stamped into the
sewer grating.
Then one day, as he was wending his weary way to the docks, he met a
friend and former shipmate a little older than himself outside the
Fenchurch Street Railway Station.
He craved for sympathy but his friend had just “got a ship” that very
morning and was hurrying home in a state of outward joy and inward
uneasiness usual to a sailor who after many days of waiting suddenly
gets a berth. This friend had the time to condole with him but briefly.
He must be moving. Then as he was running off, over his shoulder as it
were, he suggested: “Why don’t you go and speak to Mr Powell in the
Shipping Office.” Our friend objected that he did not know Mr Powell
from Adam. And the other already pretty near round the corner shouted
back advice: “Go to the private door of the Shipping Office and walk
right up to him. His desk is by the window. Go up boldly and say I
sent you.”
Our new acquaintance looking from one to the other of us declared: “Upon
my word, I had grown so desperate that I’d have gone boldly up to the
devil himself on the mere hint that he had a second mate’s job to give
away.”
It was at this point that interrupting his flow of talk to light his
pipe but holding us with his eye he inquired whether we had known
Powell. Marlow with a slight reminiscent smile murmured that he
remembered him very well.
Then there was a pause. Our new acquaintance had become involved in a
vexatious difficulty with his pipe which had suddenly betrayed his trust
and disappointed his anticipation of self-indulgence. To keep the ball
rolling I asked Marlow if this Powell was remarkable in any way.
“He was not exactly remarkable,” Marlow answered with his usual
nonchalance. “In a general way it’s very difficult for one to become
remarkable. People won’t take sufficient notice of one, don’t you know.
I remember Powell so well simply because as one of the Shipping Masters
in the Port of London he dispatched me to sea on several long stages of
my sailor’s pilgrimage. He resembled Socrates. I mean he resembled him
genuinely: that is in the face. A philosophical mind is but an
accident. He reproduced exactly, the familiar bust of, the immortal
sage, if you will imagine the bust with a high top hat riding far on the
back of the head, and a black coat over the shoulders. As I never saw
him except from the other side of the long official counter bearing the
five writing-desks of the five Shipping Masters, Mr Powell has remained
a bust to me.”
Our new acquaintance advanced now from the mantelpiece with his pipe in
good working order.
“What was the most remarkable about Powell,” he enunciated dogmatically
with his head in a cloud of smoke, “is that he should have had just that
name. You see, my name happens to be Powell too.”
It was clear that this intelligence was not imparted to us for social
purposes. It required no acknowledgment. We continued to gaze at him
with expectant eyes.
He gave himself up to the vigorous enjoyment of his pipe for a silent
minute or two. Then picking up the thread of his story he told us how
he had started hot foot for Tower Hill. He had not been that way since
the day of his examination—the finest day of his life—the day of his
overweening pride. It was very different now. He would not have called
the Queen his cousin, still, but this time it was from a sense of
profound abasement. He didn’t think himself good enough for anybody’s
kinship. He envied the purple-nosed old cab-drivers on the stand, the
boot-black boys at the edge of the pavement, the two large bobbies
pacing slowly along the Tower Gardens railings in the consciousness of
their infallible might, and the bright scarlet sentries walking smartly
to and fro before the Mint. He envied them their places in the scheme
of world’s labour. And he envied also the miserable sallow, thin-faced
loafers blinking their obscene eyes and rubbing their greasy shoulders
against the doorjambs of the Black Horse pub, because they were too far
gone to feel their degradation.
I must render the man the justice that he conveyed very well to us the
sense of his youthful hopelessness surprised at not finding its place in
the sun and no recognition of its right to live.
He went up the outer steps of Saint Katherine’s Dock House, the very
steps from which he had some six weeks before surveyed the cabstand, the
buildings, the policemen, the boot-blacks, the paint, gilt, and
plate-glass of the Black Horse, with the eye of a Conqueror. At the
time he had been at the bottom of his heart surprised that all this had
not greeted him with songs and incense, but now (he made no secret of
it) he made his entry in a slinking fashion past the doorkeeper’s glass
box. “I hadn’t any half-crowns to spare for tips,” he remarked grimly.
The man, however, ran out after him asking: “What do you require?” but
with a grateful glance up at the first floor in remembrance of Captain
R—’s examination room (how easy and delightful all that had been) he
bolted down a flight leading to the basement and found himself in a
place of dusk and mystery and many doors. He had been afraid of being
stopped by some rule of no-admittance. However he was not pursued.
The basement of Saint Katherine’s Dock House is vast in extent and
confusing in its plan. Pale shafts of light slant from above into the
gloom of its chilly passages. Powell wandered up and down there like an
early Christian refugee in the catacombs; but what little faith he had
in the success of his enterprise was oozing out at his finger-tips. At
a dark turn under a gas bracket whose flame was half turned down his
self-confidence abandoned him altogether.
“I stood there to think a little,” he said. “A foolish thing to do
because of course I got scared. What could you expect? It takes some
nerve to tackle a stranger with a request for a favour. I wished my
namesake Powell had been the devil himself. I felt somehow it would
have been an easier job. You see, I never believed in the devil enough
to be scared of him; but a man can make himself very unpleasant. I
looked at a lot of doors, all shut tight, with a growing conviction that
I would never have the pluck to open one of them. Thinking’s no good
for one’s nerve. I concluded I would give up the whole business. But I
didn’t give up in the end, and I’ll tell you what stopped me. It was
the recollection of that confounded doorkeeper who had called after me.
I felt sure the fellow would be on the lookout at the head of the
stairs. If he asked me what I had been after, as he had the right to
do, I wouldn’t know what to answer that wouldn’t make me look silly if
no worse. I got very hot. There was no chance of slinking out of this
business.
“I had lost my bearings somehow down there. Of the many doors of
various sizes, right and left, a good few had glazed lights above; some
however must have led merely into lumber rooms or such like, because
when I brought myself to try one or two I was disconcerted to find that
they were locked. I stood there irresolute and uneasy like a baffled
thief. The confounded basement was as still as a grave and I became
aware of my heart beats. Very uncomfortable sensation. Never happened
to me before or since. A bigger door to the left of me, with a large
brass handle looked as if it might lead into the Shipping Office. I
tried it, setting my teeth. ‘Here goes!’
“It came open quite easily. And lo! the place it opened into was hardly
any bigger than a cupboard. Anyhow it wasn’t more than ten feet by
twelve; and as I in a way expected to see the big shadowy cellar-like
extent of the Shipping Office where I had been once or twice before, I
was extremely startled. A gas bracket hung from the middle of the
ceiling over a dark, shabby writing-desk covered with a litter of
yellowish dusty documents. Under the flame of the single burner which
made the place ablaze with light, a plump, little man was writing hard,
his nose very near the desk. His head was perfectly bald and about the
same drab tint as the papers. He appeared pretty dusty too.
“I didn’t notice whether there were any cobwebs on him, but I shouldn’t
wonder if there were because he looked as though he had been imprisoned
for years in that little hole. The way he dropped his pen and sat
blinking my way upset me very much. And his dungeon was hot and musty;
it smelt of gas and mushrooms, and seemed to be somewhere 120 feet below
the ground. Solid, heavy stacks of paper filled all the corners
half-way up to the ceiling. And when the thought flashed upon me that
these were the premises of the Marine Board and that this fellow must be
connected in some way with ships and sailors and the sea, my
astonishment took my breath away. One couldn’t imagine why the Marine
Board should keep that bald, fat creature slaving down there. For some
reason or other I felt sorry and ashamed to have found him out in his
wretched captivity. I asked gently and sorrowfully: ‘The Shipping
Office, please.’
“He piped up in a contemptuous squeaky voice which made me start: ‘Not
here. Try the passage on the other side. Street side. This is the
Dock side. You’ve lost your way...’
“He spoke in such a spiteful tone that I thought he was going to round
off with the words: ‘You fool’ ... and perhaps he meant to. But what he
finished sharply with was: ‘Shut the door quietly after you.’
“And I did shut it quietly—you bet. Quick and quiet. The indomitable
spirit of that chap impressed me. I wonder sometimes whether he has
succeeded in writing himself into liberty and a pension at last, or had
to go out of his gas-lighted grave straight into that other dark one
where nobody would want to intrude. My humanity was pleased to discover
he had so much kick left in him, but I was not comforted in the least.
It occurred to me that if Mr Powell had the same sort of temper....
However, I didn’t give myself time to think and scuttled across the
space at the foot of the stairs into the passage where I’d been told to
try. And I tried the first door I came to, right away, without any
hanging back, because coming loudly from the hall above an amazed and
scandalised voice wanted to know what sort of game I was up to down
there. ‘Don’t you know there’s no-admittance that way?’ it roared. But
if there was anything more I shut it out of my hearing by means of a
door marked _Private_ on the outside. It let me into a six-feet wide
strip between a long counter and the wall, taken off a spacious, vaulted
room with a grated window and a glazed door giving daylight to the
further end. The first thing I saw right in front of me were three
middle-aged men having a sort of romp together round about another
fellow with a thin, long neck and sloping shoulders who stood up at a
desk writing on a large sheet of paper and taking no notice except that
he grinned quietly to himself. They turned very sour at once when they
saw me. I heard one of them mutter: ‘Hullo! What have we here?’
“‘I want to see Mr Powell, please,’ I said, very civil but firm; I
would let nothing scare me away now. This was the Shipping Office right
enough. It was after 3 o’clock and the business seemed over for the day
with them. The long-necked fellow went on with his writing steadily. I
observed that he was no longer grinning. The three others tossed their
heads all together towards the far end of the room where a fifth man had
been looking on at their antics from a high stool. I walked up to him
as boldly as if he had been the devil himself. With one foot raised up
and resting on the cross-bar of his seat he never stopped swinging the
other which was well clear of the stone floor. He had unbuttoned the
top of his waistcoat and he wore his tall hat very far at the back of
his head. He had a full unwrinkled face and such clear-shining eyes
that his grey beard looked quite false on him, stuck on for a disguise.
You said just now he resembled Socrates—didn’t you? I don’t know about
that. This Socrates was a wise man, I believe?”
“He was,” assented Marlow. “And a true friend of youth. He lectured
them in a peculiarly exasperating manner. It was a way he had.”
“Then give me Powell every time,” declared our new acquaintance
sturdily. “He didn’t lecture me in any way. Not he. He said: ‘How do
you do?’ quite kindly to my mumble. Then says he looking very hard at
me: ‘I don’t think I know you—do I?’
“‘No, sir,’ I said and down went my heart sliding into my boots, just as
the time had come to summon up all my cheek. There’s nothing meaner in
the world than a piece of impudence that isn’t carried off well. For
fear of appearing shamefaced I started about it so free and easy as
almost to frighten myself. He listened for a while looking at my face
with surprise and curiosity and then held up his hand. I was glad
enough to shut up, I can tell you.
“‘Well, you are a cool hand,’ says he. ‘And that friend of yours too.
He pestered me coming here every day for a fortnight till a captain I’m
acquainted with was good enough to give him a berth. And no sooner he’s
provided for than he turns you on. You youngsters don’t seem to mind
whom you get into trouble.’
“It was my turn now to stare with surprise and curiosity. He hadn’t
been talking loud but he lowered his voice still more.
“‘Don’t you know it’s illegal?’
“I wondered what he was driving at till I remembered that procuring a
berth for a sailor is a penal offence under the Act. That clause was
directed of course against the swindling practices of the boarding-house
crimps. It had never struck me it would apply to everybody alike no
matter what the motive, because I believed then that people on shore did
their work with care and foresight.
“I was confounded at the idea, but Mr Powell made me soon see that an
Act of Parliament hasn’t any sense of its own. It has only the sense
that’s put into it; and that’s precious little sometimes. He didn’t
mind helping a young man to a ship now and then, he said, but if we kept
on coming constantly it would soon get about that he was doing it for
money.
“‘A pretty thing that would be: the Senior Shipping Master of the Port
of London hauled up in a police court and fined fifty pounds,’ says he.
‘I’ve another four years to serve to get my pension. It could be made
to look very black against me and don’t you make any mistake about it,’
he says.
“And all the time with one knee well up he went on swinging his other
leg like a boy on a gate and looking at me very straight with his
shining eyes. I was confounded I tell you. It made me sick to hear him
imply that somebody would make a report against him.
“‘Oh!’—I asked shocked, ‘who would think of such a scurvy trick, sir?’
I was half disgusted with him for having the mere notion of it.
“‘Who?’ says he, speaking very low. ‘Anybody. One of the office
messengers maybe. I’ve risen to be the Senior of this office and we are
all very good friends here, but don’t you think that my colleague that
sits next to me wouldn’t like to go up to this desk by the window four
years in advance of the regulation time? Or even one year for that
matter. It’s human nature.’
“I could not help turning my head. The three fellows who had been
skylarking when I came in were now talking together very soberly, and
the long-necked chap was going on with his writing still. He seemed to
me the most dangerous of the lot. I saw him side-face and his lips were
set very tight. I had never looked at mankind in that light before.
When one’s young human nature shocks one. But what startled me most was
to see the door I had come through open slowly and give passage to a
head in a uniform cap with a Board of Trade badge. It was that blamed
old doorkeeper from the hall. He had run me to earth and meant to dig
me out too. He walked up the office smirking craftily, cap in hand.
“‘What is it, Symons?’ asked Mr Powell.
“‘I was only wondering where this ’ere gentleman ’ad gone to, sir. He
slipped past me upstairs, sir.’
“I felt mighty uncomfortable.
“‘That’s all right, Symons. I know the gentleman,’ says Mr Powell as
serious as a judge.
“‘Very well, sir. Of course, sir. I saw the gentleman running races
all by ’isself down ’ere, so I...’
“‘It’s all right I tell you,’ Mr Powell cut him short with a wave of
his hand; and, as the old fraud walked off at last, he raised his eyes
to me. I did not know what to do: stay there, or clear out, or say that
I was sorry.
“‘Let’s see,’ says he, ‘what did you tell me your name was?’
“Now, observe, I hadn’t given him my name at all and his question
embarrassed me a bit. Somehow or other it didn’t seem proper for me to
fling his own name at him as it were. So I merely pulled out my new
certificate from my pocket and put it into his hand unfolded, so that he
could read _Charles Powell_ written very plain on the parchment.
“He dropped his eyes on to it and after a while laid it quietly on the
desk by his side. I didn’t know whether he meant to make any remark on
this coincidence. Before he had time to say anything the glass door
came open with a bang and a tall, active man rushed in with great
strides. His face looked very red below his high silk hat. You could
see at once he was the skipper of a big ship.
“Mr Powell, after telling me in an undertone to wait a little,
addressed him in a friendly way.
“‘I’ve been expecting you in every moment to fetch away your Articles,
Captain. Here they are all ready for you.’ And turning to a pile of
agreements lying at his elbow he took up the topmost of them. From
where I stood I could read the words: ‘Ship _Ferndale_’ written in a
large round hand on the first page.
“‘No, Mr Powell, they aren’t ready, worse luck,’ says that skipper.
‘I’ve got to ask you to strike out my second officer.’ He seemed
excited and bothered. He explained that his second mate had been
working on board all the morning. At one o’clock he went out to get a
bit of dinner and didn’t turn up at two as he ought to have done.
Instead there came a messenger from the hospital with a note signed by a
doctor. Collar-bone and one arm broken. Let himself be knocked down by
a pair-horse van while crossing the road outside the dock gate, as if he
had neither eyes nor ears. And the ship ready to leave the dock at six
o’clock to-morrow morning!
“Mr Powell dipped his pen and began to turn the leaves of the agreement
over. ‘We must then take his name off,’ he says in a kind of
unconcerned sing-song.
“‘What am I to do?’ burst out the skipper. ‘This office closes at four
o’clock. I can’t find a man in half an hour.’
“‘This office closes at four,’ repeats Mr Powell glancing up and down
the pages and touching up a letter here and there with perfect
indifference.
“‘Even if I managed to lay hold some time to-day of a man ready to go at
such short notice I couldn’t ship him regularly here—could I?’
“Mr Powell was busy drawing his pen through the entries relating to
that unlucky second mate and making a note in the margin.
“‘You could sign him on yourself on board,’ says he without looking up.
‘But I don’t think you’ll find easily an officer for such a pier-head
jump.’
“Upon this the fine-looking skipper gave signs of distress. The ship
mustn’t miss the next morning’s tide. He had to take on board forty
tons of dynamite and a hundred and twenty tons of gunpowder at a place
down the river before proceeding to sea. It was all arranged for next
day. There would be no end of fuss and complications if the ship didn’t
turn up in time.—I couldn’t help hearing all this, while wishing him to
take himself off, because I wanted to know why Mr Powell had told me to
wait. After what he had been saying there didn’t seem any object in my
hanging about. If I had had my certificate in my pocket I should have
tried to slip away quietly; but Mr Powell had turned about into the
same position I found him in at first and was again swinging his leg.
My certificate open on the desk was under his left elbow and I couldn’t
very well go up and jerk it away.
“‘I don’t know,’ says he carelessly, addressing the helpless captain but
looking fixedly at me with an expression as if I hadn’t been there. ‘I
don’t know whether I ought to tell you that I know of a disengaged
second mate at hand.’
“‘Do you mean you’ve got him here?’ shouts the other looking all over
the empty public part of the office as if he were ready to fling himself
bodily upon anything resembling a second mate. He had been so full of
his difficulty that I verily believe he had never noticed me. Or
perhaps seeing me inside he may have thought I was some understrapper
belonging to the place. But when Mr Powell nodded in my direction he
became very quiet and gave me a long stare. Then he stooped to Mr
Powell’s ear—I suppose he imagined he was whispering, but I heard him
well enough.
“‘Looks very respectable.’
“‘Certainly,’ says the Shipping Master quite calm and staring all the
time at me. ‘His name’s Powell.’
“‘Oh, I see!’ says the skipper as if struck all of a heap. ‘But is he
ready to join at once?’
“I had a sort of vision of my lodgings—in the North of London, too,
beyond Dalston, away to the devil—and all my gear scattered about, and
my empty sea-chest somewhere in an outhouse the good people I was
staying with had at the end of their sooty strip of garden. I heard the
Shipping Master say in the coolest sort of way:—
“‘He’ll sleep on board to-night.’
“‘He had better,’ says the Captain of the _Ferndale_ very businesslike,
as if the whole thing were settled. I can’t say I was dumb for joy as
you may suppose. It wasn’t exactly that. I was more by way of being
out of breath with the quickness of it. It didn’t seem possible that
this was happening to me. But the skipper, after he had talked for a
while with Mr Powell, too low for me to hear became visibly perplexed.
“I suppose he had heard I was freshly passed and without experience as
an officer, because he turned about and looked me over as if I had been
exposed for sale.
“‘He’s young,’ he mutters. ‘Looks smart, though.... You’re smart and
willing (this to me very sudden and loud) and all that, aren’t you?’
“I just managed to open and shut my mouth, no more, being taken
unawares. But it was enough for him. He made as if I had deafened him
with protestations of my smartness and willingness.
“‘Of course, of course. All right.’ And then turning to the Shipping
Master who sat there swinging his leg, he said that he certainly
couldn’t go to sea without a second officer. I stood by as if all these
things were happening to some other chap whom I was seeing through with
it. Mr Powell stared at me with those shining eyes of his. But that
bothered skipper turns upon me again as though he wanted to snap my head
off.
“‘You aren’t too big to be told how to do things—are you? You’ve a lot
to learn yet though you mayn’t think so.’
“I had half a mind to save my dignity by telling him that if it was my
seamanship he was alluding to I wanted him to understand that a fellow
who had survived being turned inside out for an hour and a half by
Captain R—was equal to any demand his old ship was likely to make on
his competence. However he didn’t give me a chance to make that sort of
fool of myself because before I could open my mouth he had gone round on
another tack and was addressing himself affably to Mr Powell who
swinging his leg never took his eyes off me.
“‘I’ll take your young friend willingly, Mr Powell. If you let him
sign on as second mate at once I’ll take the Articles away with me now.’
“It suddenly dawned upon me that the innocent skipper of the _Ferndale_
had taken it for granted that I was a relative of the Shipping Master!
I was quite astonished at this discovery, though indeed the mistake was
natural enough under the circumstances. What I ought to have admired
was the reticence with which this misunderstanding had been established
and acted upon. But I was too stupid then to admire anything. All my
anxiety was that this should be cleared up. I was ass enough to wonder
exceedingly at Mr Powell failing to notice the misapprehension. I saw
a slight twitch come and go on his face; but instead of setting right
that mistake the Shipping Master swung round on his stool and addressed
me as ‘Charles.’ He did. And I detected him taking a hasty squint at
my certificate just before, because clearly till he did so he was not
sure of my christian name. ‘Now then come round in front of the desk,
Charles,’ says he in a loud voice.
“Charles! At first, I declare to you, it didn’t seem possible that he
was addressing himself to me. I even looked round for that Charles but
there was nobody behind me except the thin-necked chap still hard at his
writing, and the other three Shipping Masters who were changing their
coats and reaching for their hats, making ready to go home. It was the
industrious thin-necked man who without laying down his pen lifted with
his left hand a flap near his desk and said kindly:—
“‘Pass this way.’
“I walked through in a trance, faced Mr Powell, from whom I learned
that we were bound to Port Elizabeth first, and signed my name on the
Articles of the ship _Ferndale_ as second mate—the voyage not to exceed
two years.
“‘You won’t fail to join—eh?’ says the captain anxiously. ‘It would
cause no end of trouble and expense if you did. You’ve got a good six
hours to get your gear together, and then you’ll have time to snatch a
sleep on board before the crew joins in the morning.’
“It was easy enough for him to talk of getting ready in six hours for a
voyage that was not to exceed two years. He hadn’t to do that trick
himself, and with his sea-chest locked up in an outhouse the key of
which had been mislaid for a week as I remembered. But neither was I
much concerned. The idea that I was absolutely going to sea at six
o’clock next morning hadn’t got quite into my head yet. It had been too
sudden.
“Mr Powell, slipping the Articles into a long envelope, spoke up with a
sort of cold half-laugh without looking at either of us.
“‘Mind you don’t disgrace the name, Charles.’
“And the skipper chimes in very kindly:—
“‘He’ll do well enough I dare say. I’ll look after him a bit.’
“Upon this he grabs the Articles, says something about trying to run in
for a minute to see that poor devil in the hospital, and off he goes
with his heavy swinging step after telling me sternly: ‘Don’t you go
like that poor fellow and get yourself run over by a cart as if you
hadn’t either eyes or ears.’
“‘Mr Powell,’ says I timidly (there was by then only the thin-necked
man left in the office with us and he was already by the door, standing
on one leg to turn the bottom of his trousers up before going away).
‘Mr Powell,’ says I, ‘I believe the Captain of the _Ferndale_ was
thinking all the time that I was a relation of yours.’
“I was rather concerned about the propriety of it, you know, but Mr
Powell didn’t seem to be in the least.
“‘Did he?’ says he. ‘That’s funny, because it seems to me too that I’ve
been a sort of good uncle to several of you young fellows lately. Don’t
you think so yourself? However, if you don’t like it you may put him
right—when you get out to sea.’ At this I felt a bit queer. Mr
Powell had rendered me a very good service:—because it’s a fact that
with us merchant sailors the first voyage as officer is the real start
in life. He had given me no less than that. I told him warmly that he
had done for me more that day than all my relations put together ever
did.
“‘Oh, no, no,’ says he. ‘I guess it’s that shipment of explosives
waiting down the river which has done most for you. Forty tons of
dynamite have been your best friend to-day, young man.’
“That was true too, perhaps. Anyway I saw clearly enough that I had
nothing to thank myself for. But as I tried to thank him, he checked my
stammering.
“‘Don’t be in a hurry to thank me,’ says he. ‘The voyage isn’t finished
yet.’
“Our new acquaintance paused, then added meditatively: ‘Queer man. As
if it made any difference. Queer man.’”
“It’s certainly unwise to admit any sort of responsibility for our
actions, whose consequences we are never able to foresee,” remarked
Marlow by way of assent.
“The consequence of his action was that I got a ship,” said the other.
“That could not do much harm,” he added with a laugh which argued a
probably unconscious contempt of general ideas.
But Marlow was not put off. He was patient and reflective. He had been
at sea many years and I verily believe he liked sea-life because upon
the whole it is favourable to reflection. I am speaking of the now
nearly vanished sea-life under sail. To those who may be surprised at
the statement I will point out that this life secured for the mind of
him who embraced it the inestimable advantages of solitude and silence.
Marlow had the habit of pursuing general ideas in a peculiar manner,
between jest and earnest.
“Oh, I wouldn’t suggest,” he said, “that your namesake Mr Powell, the
Shipping Master, had done you much harm. Such was hardly his intention.
And even if it had been he would not have had the power. He was but a
man, and the incapacity to achieve anything distinctly good or evil is
inherent in our earthly condition. Mediocrity is our mark. And perhaps
it’s just as well, since, for the most part, we cannot be certain of the
effect of our actions.”
“I don’t know about the effect,” the other stood up to Marlow manfully.
“What effect did you expect anyhow? I tell you he did something
uncommonly kind.”
“He did what he could,” Marlow retorted gently, “and on his own showing
that was not a very great deal. I cannot help thinking that there was
some malice in the way he seized the opportunity to serve you. He
managed to make you uncomfortable. You wanted to go to sea, but he
jumped at the chance of accommodating your desire with a vengeance. I
am inclined to think your cheek alarmed him. And this was an excellent
occasion to suppress you altogether. For if you accepted he was
relieved of you with every appearance of humanity, and if you made
objections (after requesting his assistance, mind you) it was open to
him to drop you as a sort of impostor. You might have had to decline
that berth for some very valid reason. From sheer necessity perhaps!
The notice was too uncommonly short. But under the circumstances you’d
have covered yourself with ignominy.”
Our new friend knocked the ashes out of his pipe.
“Quite a mistake,” he said. “I am not of the declining sort, though
I’ll admit it was something like telling a man that you would like a
bath and in consequence being instantly knocked overboard to sink or
swim with your clothes on. However, I didn’t feel as if I were in deep
water at first. I left the shipping office quietly and for a time
strolled along the street as easy as if I had a week before me to fit
myself out. But by and by I reflected that the notice was even shorter
than it looked. The afternoon was well advanced; I had some things to
get, a lot of small matters to attend to, one or two persons to see: One
of them was an aunt of mine, my only relation, who quarrelled with poor
father as long as he lived about some silly matter that had neither
right nor wrong to it. She left her money to me when she died. I used
always to go and see her for decency’s sake. I had so much to do before
night that I didn’t know where to begin. I felt inclined to sit down on
the kerb and hold my head in my hands. It was as if an engine had been
started going under my skull. Finally I sat down in the first cab that
came along and it was a hard matter to keep on sitting there I can tell
you, while we rolled up and down the streets, pulling up here and there,
the parcels accumulating round me and the engine in my head gathering
more way every minute. The composure of the people on the pavements was
provoking to a degree, and as to the people in shops, they were
benumbed, more than half frozen—imbecile. Funny how it affects you to
be in a peculiar state of mind: everybody that does not act up to your
excitement seems so confoundedly unfriendly. And my state of mind what
with the hurry, the worry and a growing exultation was peculiar enough.
That engine in my head went round at its top speed hour after hour till
at about eleven at night it let up on me suddenly at the entrance to the
Dock before large iron gates in a dead wall.”
These gates were closed and locked. The cabby, after shooting his
things off the roof of his machine into young Powell’s arms, drove away
leaving him alone with his sea-chest, a sail cloth bag and a few parcels
on the pavement about his feet. It was a dark, narrow thoroughfare he
told us. A mean row of houses on the other side looked empty: there
wasn’t the smallest gleam of light in them. The white-hot glare of a
gin palace a good way off made the intervening piece of the street
pitch-black. Some human shapes appearing mysteriously, as if they had
sprung up from the dark ground, shunned the edge of the faint light
thrown down by the gateway lamps. These figures were wary in their
movements and perfectly silent of foot, like beasts of prey slinking
about a camp fire. Powell gathered up his belongings and hovered over
them like a hen over her brood. A gruffly, insinuating voice said:
“Let’s carry your things in, Capt’in! I’ve got my pal ’ere.”
He was a tall, bony, grey-haired ruffian with a bulldog jaw, in a torn
cotton shirt and moleskin trousers. The shadow of his hobnailed boots
was enormous and coffin-like. His pal, who didn’t come up much higher
than his elbow, stepping forward exhibited a pale face with a long
drooping nose and no chin to speak of. He seemed to have just scrambled
out of a dust-bin in a tam-o’-shanter cap and a tattered soldier’s coat
much too long for him. Being so deadly white he looked like a horrible
dirty invalid in a ragged dressing-gown. The coat flapped open in front
and the rest of his apparel consisted of one brace which crossed his
naked, bony chest, and a pair of trousers. He blinked rapidly as if
dazed by the faint light, while his patron, the old bandit, glowered at
young Powell from under his beetling brow.
“Say the word, Capt’in. The bobby’ll let us in all right. ’E knows
both of us.”
“I didn’t answer him,” continued Mr Powell. “I was listening to
footsteps on the other side of the gate, echoing between the walls of
the warehouses as if in an uninhabited town of very high buildings dark
from basement to roof. You could never have guessed that within a
stone’s throw there was an open sheet of water and big ships lying
afloat. The few gas lamps showing up a bit of brick work here and
there, appeared in the blackness like penny dips in a range of cellars—
and the solitary footsteps came on, tramp, tramp. A dock policeman
strode into the light on the other side of the gate, very broad-chested
and stern.
“‘Hallo! What’s up here?’
“He was really surprised, but after some palaver he let me in together
with the two loafers carrying my luggage. He grumbled at them however
and slammed the gate violently with a loud clang. I was startled to
discover how many night prowlers had collected in the darkness of the
street in such a short time and without my being aware of it. Directly
we were through they came surging against the bars, silent, like a mob
of ugly spectres. But suddenly, up the street somewhere, perhaps near
that public-house, a row started as if Bedlam had broken loose: shouts,
yells, an awful shrill shriek—and at that noise all these heads
vanished from behind the bars.
“Look at this,” marvelled the constable. “It’s a wonder to me they
didn’t make off with your things while you were waiting.”
“I would have taken good care of that,” I said defiantly. But the
constable wasn’t impressed.
“‘Much you would have done. The bag going off round one dark corner;
the chest round another. Would you have run two ways at once? And
anyhow you’d have been tripped up and jumped upon before you had run
three yards. I tell you you’ve had a most extraordinary chance that
there wasn’t one of them regular boys about to-night, in the High
Street, to twig your loaded cab go by. Ted here is honest.... You are
on the honest lay, Ted, ain’t you?’
“‘Always was, orficer,’ said the big ruffian with feeling. The other
frail creature seemed dumb and only hopped about with the edge of its
soldier coat touching the ground.
“‘Oh yes, I dare say,’ said the constable. ‘Now then, forward, march....
He’s that because he ain’t game for the other thing,’ he confided to
me. ‘He hasn’t got the nerve for it. However, I ain’t going to lose
sight of them two till they go out through the gate. That little chap’s
a devil. He’s got the nerve for anything, only he hasn’t got the
muscle. Well! Well! You’ve had a chance to get in with a whole skin
and with all your things.’
“I was incredulous a little. It seemed impossible that after getting
ready with so much hurry and inconvenience I should have lost my chance
of a start in life from such a cause. I asked: ‘Does that sort of thing
happen often so near the dock-gates?’
“‘Often! No! Of course not often. But it ain’t often either that a
man comes along with a cab-load of things to join a ship at this time of
night. I’ve been in the dock police thirteen years and haven’t seen it
done once.’
“Meantime we followed my sea-chest which was being carried down a sort
of deep narrow lane, separating two high warehouses, between honest Ted
and his little devil of a pal who had to keep up a trot to the other’s
stride. The skirt of his soldier’s coat floating behind him nearly
swept the ground so that he seemed to be running on castors. At the
corner of the gloomy passage a rigged jib boom with a dolphin-striker
ending in an arrow-head stuck out of the night close to a cast iron
lamp-post. It was the quay side. They set down their load in the light
and honest Ted asked hoarsely: ‘Where’s your ship, guv’nor?’
“I didn’t know. The constable was interested at my ignorance.
“‘Don’t know where your ship is?’ he asked with curiosity. ‘And you the
second officer! Haven’t you been working on board of her?’
“I couldn’t explain that the only work connected with my appointment was
the work of chance. I told him briefly that I didn’t know her at all.
At this he remarked: ‘So I see. Here she is, right before you. That’s
her.’
“At once the head-gear in the gas light inspired me with interest and
respect; the spars were big, the chains and ropes stout and the whole
thing looked powerful and trustworthy. Barely touched by the light her
bows rose faintly alongside the narrow strip of the quay; the rest of
her was a black smudge in the darkness. Here I, was face to face with
my start in life. We walked in a body a few steps on a greasy pavement
between her side and the towering wall of a warehouse and I hit my shins
cruelly against the end of the gangway. The constable hailed her
quietly in a bass undertone ‘_Ferndale_ there!’ A feeble and dismal
sound, something in the nature of a buzzing groan, answered from behind
the bulwarks.
“I distinguished vaguely an irregular round knob, of wood, perhaps,
resting on the rail. It did not move in the least; but as another
broken-down buzz like a still fainter echo of the first dismal sound
proceeded from it I concluded it must be the head of the ship-keeper.
The stalwart constable jeered in a mock-official manner.
“‘Second officer coming to join. Move yourself a bit.’
“The truth of the statement touched me in the pit of the stomach (you
know that’s the spot where emotion gets home on a man) for it was borne
upon me that really and truly I was nothing but a second officer of a
ship just like any other second officer, to that constable. I was moved
by this solid evidence of my new dignity. Only his tone offended me.
Nevertheless I gave him the tip he was looking for. Thereupon he lost
all interest in me, humorous or otherwise, and walked away driving
sternly before him the honest Ted, who went off grumbling to himself
like a hungry ogre, and his horrible dumb little pal in the soldier’s
coat, who, from first to last, never emitted the slightest sound.
“It was very dark on the quarter-deck of the _Ferndale_ between the deep
bulwarks overshadowed by the break of the poop and frowned upon by the
front of the warehouse. I plumped down on to my chest near the after
hatch as if my legs had been jerked from under me. I felt suddenly very
tired and languid. The ship-keeper, whom I could hardly make out hung
over the capstan in a fit of weak pitiful coughing. He gasped out very
low ‘Oh! dear! Oh! dear!’ and struggled for breath so long that I got
up alarmed and irresolute.
“‘I’ve been took like this since last Christmas twelvemonth. It ain’t
nothing.’
“He seemed a hundred years old at least. I never saw him properly
because he was gone ashore and out of sight when I came on deck in the
morning; but he gave me the notion of the feeblest creature that ever
breathed. His voice was thin like the buzzing of a mosquito. As it
would have been cruel to demand assistance from such a shadowy wreck I
went to work myself, dragging my chest along a pitch-black passage under
the poop deck, while he sighed and moaned around me as if my exertions
were more than his weakness could stand. At last as I banged pretty
heavily against the bulkheads he warned me in his faint breathless
wheeze to be more careful.
“‘What’s the matter?’ I asked rather roughly, not relishing to be
admonished by this forlorn broken-down ghost.
“‘Nothing! Nothing, sir,’ he protested so hastily that he lost his poor
breath again and I felt sorry for him. ‘Only the captain and his missus
are sleeping on board. She’s a lady that mustn’t be disturbed. They
came about half-past eight, and we had a permit to have lights in the
cabin till ten to-night.’
“This struck me as a considerable piece of news. I had never been in a
ship where the captain had his wife with him. I’d heard fellows say
that captains’ wives could work a lot of mischief on board ship if they
happened to take a dislike to anyone; especially the new wives if young
and pretty. The old and experienced wives on the other hand fancied
they knew more about the ship than the skipper himself and had an eye
like a hawk’s for what went on. They were like an extra chief mate of a
particularly sharp and unfeeling sort who made his report in the
evening. The best of them were a nuisance. In the general opinion a
skipper with his wife on board was more difficult to please; but whether
to show off his authority before an admiring female or from loving
anxiety for her safety or simply from irritation at her presence—nobody
I ever heard on the subject could tell for certain.
“After I had bundled in my things somehow I struck a match and had a
dazzling glimpse of my berth; then I pitched the roll of my bedding into
the bunk but took no trouble to spread it out. I wasn’t sleepy now,
neither was I tired. And the thought that I was done with the earth for
many many months to come made me feel very quiet and self-contained as
it were. Sailors will understand what I mean.”
Marlow nodded. “It is a strictly professional feeling,” he commented.
“But other professions or trades know nothing of it. It is only this
calling whose primary appeal lies in the suggestion of restless
adventure which holds out that deep sensation to those who embrace it.
It is difficult to define, I admit.”
“I should call it the peace of the sea,” said Mr Charles Powell in an
earnest tone but looking at us as though he expected to be met by a
laugh of derision and were half prepared to salve his reputation for
common sense by joining in it. But neither of us laughed at Mr Charles
Powell in whose start in life we had been called to take a part. He was
lucky in his audience.
“A very good name,” said Marlow looking at him approvingly. “A sailor
finds a deep feeling of security in the exercise of his calling. The
exacting life of the sea has this advantage over the life of the earth
that its claims are simple and cannot be evaded.”
“Gospel truth,” assented Mr Powell. “No! they cannot be evaded.”
That an excellent understanding should have established itself between
my old friend and our new acquaintance was remarkable enough. For they
were exactly dissimilar—one individuality projecting itself in length
and the other in breadth, which is already a sufficient ground for
irreconcilable difference. Marlow who was lanky, loose, quietly
composed in varied shades of brown robbed of every vestige of gloss, had
a narrow, veiled glance, the neutral bearing and the secret irritability
which go together with a predisposition to congestion of the liver. The
other, compact, broad and sturdy of limb, seemed extremely full of sound
organs functioning vigorously all the time in order to keep up the
brilliance of his colouring, the light curl of his coal-black hair and
the lustre of his eyes, which asserted themselves roundly in an open,
manly face. Between two such organisms one would not have expected to
find the slightest temperamental accord. But I have observed that
profane men living in ships like the holy men gathered together in
monasteries develop traits of profound resemblance. This must be
because the service of the sea and the service of a temple are both
detached from the vanities and errors of a world which follows no severe
rule. The men of the sea understand each other very well in their view
of earthly things, for simplicity is a good counsellor and isolation not
a bad educator. A turn of mind composed of innocence and scepticism is
common to them all, with the addition of an unexpected insight into
motives, as of disinterested lookers-on at a game. Mr Powell took me
aside to say, “I like the things he says.”
“You understand each other pretty well,” I observed.
“I know his sort,” said Powell, going to the window to look at his
cutter still riding to the flood. “He’s the sort that’s always chasing
some notion or other round and round his head just for the fun of the
thing.”
“Keeps them in good condition,” I said.
“Lively enough I dare say,” he admitted.
“Would you like better a man who let his notions lie curled up?”
“That I wouldn’t,” answered our new acquaintance. Clearly he was not
difficult to get on with. “I like him, very well,” he continued,
“though it isn’t easy to make him out. He seems to be up to a thing or
two. What’s he doing?”
I informed him that our friend Marlow had retired from the sea in a sort
of half-hearted fashion some years ago.
Mr Powell’s comment was: “Fancied he’d had enough of it?”
“Fancied’s the very word to use in this connection,” I observed,
remembering the subtly provisional character of Marlow’s long sojourn
amongst us. From year to year he dwelt on land as a bird rests on the
branch of a tree, so tense with the power of brusque flight into its
true element that it is incomprehensible why it should sit still minute
after minute. The sea is the sailor’s true element, and Marlow,
lingering on shore, was to me an object of incredulous commiseration
like a bird, which, secretly, should have lost its faith in the high
virtue of flying.