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?... Put out?... eh?” He buttoned his
thick jacket up to the throat, and only then added a gloomy “Ay, 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. Ay. 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 recognised 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 Saint 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, clearly 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—ay 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.
And Mr Powell marvelled....
“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 Redskin 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 naïve)—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 shipmaster 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 née 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 “Ay, ay, 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
lookout. 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....