He shook hands with me, and pronounced the memorable words:
“If you happen to be in want of employment, remember that as long as I
have a ship you have a ship, too.”
In the way of compliment there is nothing to beat this from a ship’s
captain to his second mate at the end of a voyage, when the work is over
and the subordinate is done with. And there is a pathos in that memory,
for the poor fellow never went to sea again after all. He was already
ailing when we passed St. Helena; was laid up for a time when we were off
the Western Islands, but got out of bed to make his Landfall. He managed
to keep up on deck as far as the Downs, where, giving his orders in an
exhausted voice, he anchored for a few hours to send a wire to his wife
and take aboard a North Sea pilot to help him sail the ship up the east
coast. He had not felt equal to the task by himself, for it is the sort
of thing that keeps a deep-water man on his feet pretty well night and
day.
When we arrived in Dundee, Mrs. B— was already there, waiting to take him
home. We travelled up to London by the same train; but by the time I had
managed to get through with my examination the ship had sailed on her
next voyage without him, and, instead of joining her again, I went by
request to see my old commander in his home. This is the only one of my
captains I have ever visited in that way. He was out of bed by then,
“quite convalescent,” as he declared, making a few tottering steps to
meet me at the sitting-room door. Evidently he was reluctant to take his
final cross-bearings of this earth for a Departure on the only voyage to
an unknown destination a sailor ever undertakes. And it was all very
nice—the large, sunny room; his deep, easy-chair in a bow window, with
pillows and a footstool; the quiet, watchful care of the elderly, gentle
woman who had borne him five children, and had not, perhaps, lived with
him more than five full years out of the thirty or so of their married
life. There was also another woman there in a plain black dress, quite
gray-haired, sitting very erect on her chair with some sewing, from which
she snatched side-glances in his direction, and uttering not a single
word during all the time of my call. Even when, in due course, I carried
over to her a cup of tea, she only nodded at me silently, with the
faintest ghost of a smile on her tight-set lips. I imagine she must have
been a maiden sister of Mrs. B— come to help nurse her brother-in-law.
His youngest boy, a late-comer, a great cricketer it seemed, twelve years
old or thereabouts, chattered enthusiastically of the exploits of W. G.
Grace. And I remember his eldest son, too, a newly-fledged doctor, who
took me out to smoke in the garden, and, shaking his head with
professional gravity, but with genuine concern, muttered: “Yes, but he
doesn’t get back his appetite. I don’t like that—I don’t like that at
all.” The last sight of Captain B— I had was as he nodded his head to me
out of the bow window when I turned round to close the front gate.
It was a distinct and complete impression, something that I don’t know
whether to call a Landfall or a Departure. Certainly he had gazed at
times very fixedly before him with the Landfall’s vigilant look, this
sea-captain seated incongruously in a deep-backed chair. He had not then
talked to me of employment, of ships, of being ready to take another
command; but he had discoursed of his early days, in the abundant but
thin flow of a wilful invalid’s talk. The women looked worried, but sat
still, and I learned more of him in that interview than in the whole
eighteen months we had sailed together. It appeared he had “served his
time” in the copper-ore trade, the famous copper-ore trade of old days
between Swansea and the Chilian coast, coal out and ore in, deep-loaded
both ways, as if in wanton defiance of the great Cape Horn seas—a work,
this, for staunch ships, and a great school of staunchness for
West-Country seamen. A whole fleet of copper-bottomed barques, as strong
in rib and planking, as well-found in gear, as ever was sent upon the
seas, manned by hardy crews and commanded by young masters, was engaged
in that now long defunct trade. “That was the school I was trained in,”
he said to me almost boastfully, lying back amongst his pillows with a
rug over his legs. And it was in that trade that he obtained his first
command at a very early age. It was then that he mentioned to me how, as
a young commander, he was always ill for a few days before making land
after a long passage. But this sort of sickness used to pass off with
the first sight of a familiar landmark. Afterwards, he added, as he grew
older, all that nervousness wore off completely; and I observed his weary
eyes gaze steadily ahead, as if there had been nothing between him and
the straight line of sea and sky, where whatever a seaman is looking for
is first bound to appear. But I have also seen his eyes rest fondly upon
the faces in the room, upon the pictures on the wall, upon all the
familiar objects of that home, whose abiding and clear image must have
flashed often on his memory in times of stress and anxiety at sea. Was
he looking out for a strange Landfall, or taking with an untroubled mind
the bearings for his last Departure?
It is hard to say; for in that voyage from which no man returns Landfall
and Departure are instantaneous, merging together into one moment of
supreme and final attention. Certainly I do not remember observing any
sign of faltering in the set expression of his wasted face, no hint of
the nervous anxiety of a young commander about to make land on an
uncharted shore. He had had too much experience of Departures and
Landfalls! And had he not “served his time” in the famous copper-ore
trade out of the Bristol Channel, the work of the staunchest ships
afloat, and the school of staunch seamen?