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PART II - THE KNIGHT: CHAPTER TWO - YOUNG POWELL SEES AND HEARS
"You remember," went on Marlow, "how I feared that Mr. Powell's want
of experience would stand in his way of appreciating the unusual.
The unusual I had in my mind was something of a very subtle sort:
the unusual in marital relations. I may well have doubted the
capacity of a young man too much concerned with the creditable
performance of his professional duties to observe what in the nature
of things is not easily observable in itself, and still less so
under the special circumstances. In the majority of ships a second
officer has not many points of contact with the captain's wife. He
sits at the same table with her at meals, generally speaking; he may
now and then be addressed more or less kindly on insignificant
matters, and have the opportunity to show her some small attentions
on deck. And that is all. Under such conditions, signs can be seen
only by a sharp and practised eye. I am alluding now to troubles
which are subtle often to the extent of not being understood by the
very hearts they devastate or uplift.
Yes, Mr. Powell, whom the chance of his name had thrown upon the
floating stage of that tragicomedy would have been perfectly useless
for my purpose if the unusual of an obvious kind had not aroused his
attention from the first.
We know how he joined that ship so suddenly offered to his anxious
desire to make a real start in his profession. He had come on board
breathless with the hurried winding up of his shore affairs,
accompanied by two horrible night-birds, escorted by a dock
policeman on the make, received by an asthmatic shadow of a ship-
keeper, warned not to make a noise in the darkness of the passage
because the captain and his wife were already on board. That in
itself was already somewhat unusual. Captains and their wives do
not, as a rule, join a moment sooner than is necessary. They prefer
to spend the last moments with their friends and relations. A ship
in one of London's older docks with their restrictions as to lights
and so on is not the place for a happy evening. Still, as the tide
served at six in the morning, one could understand them coming on
board the evening before.
Just then young Powell felt as if anybody ought to be glad enough to
be quit of the shore. We know he was an orphan from a very early
age, without brothers or sisters--no near relations of any kind, I
believe, except that aunt who had quarrelled with his father. No
affection stood in the way of the quiet satisfaction with which he
thought that now all the worries were over, that there was nothing
before him but duties, that he knew what he would have to do as soon
as the dawn broke and for a long succession of days. A most
soothing certitude. He enjoyed it in the dark, stretched out in his
bunk with his new blankets pulled over him. Some clock ashore
beyond the dock-gates struck two. And then he heard nothing more,
because he went off into a light sleep from which he woke up with a
start. He had not taken his clothes off, it was hardly worth while.
He jumped up and went on deck.
The morning was clear, colourless, grey overhead; the dock like a
sheet of darkling glass crowded with upside-down reflections of
warehouses, of hulls and masts of silent ships. Rare figures moved
here and there on the distant quays. A knot of men stood alongside
with clothes-bags and wooden chests at their feet. Others were
coming down the lane between tall, blind walls, surrounding a hand-
cart loaded with more bags and boxes. It was the crew of the
Ferndale. They began to come on board. He scanned their faces as
they passed forward filling the roomy deck with the shuffle of their
footsteps and the murmur of voices, like the awakening to life of a
world about to be launched into space.
Far away down the clear glassy stretch in the middle of the long
dock Mr. Powell watched the tugs coming in quietly through the open
gates. A subdued firm voice behind him interrupted this
contemplation. It was Franklin, the thick chief mate, who was
addressing him with a watchful appraising stare of his prominent
black eyes: "You'd better take a couple of these chaps with you and
look out for her aft. We are going to cast off."
"Yes, sir," Powell said with proper alacrity; but for a moment they
remained looking at each other fixedly. Something like a faint
smile altered the set of the chief mate's lips just before he moved
off forward with his brisk step.
Mr. Powell, getting up on the poop, touched his cap to Captain
Anthony, who was there alone. He tells me that it was only then
that he saw his captain for the first time. The day before, in the
shipping office, what with the bad light and his excitement at this
berth obtained as if by a brusque and unscrupulous miracle, did not
count. He had then seemed to him much older and heavier. He was
surprised at the lithe figure, broad of shoulder, narrow at the
hips, the fire of the deep-set eyes, the springiness of the walk.
The captain gave him a steady stare, nodded slightly, and went on
pacing the poop with an air of not being aware of what was going on,
his head rigid, his movements rapid.
Powell stole several glances at him with a curiosity very natural
under the circumstances. He wore a short grey jacket and a grey
cap. In the light of the dawn, growing more limpid rather than
brighter, Powell noticed the slightly sunken cheeks under the
trimmed beard, the perpendicular fold on the forehead, something
hard and set about the mouth.
It was too early yet for the work to have begun in the dock. The
water gleamed placidly, no movement anywhere on the long straight
lines of the quays, no one about to be seen except the few dock
hands busy alongside the Ferndale, knowing their work, mostly silent
or exchanging a few words in low tones as if they, too, had been
aware of that lady 'who mustn't be disturbed.' The Ferndale was the
only ship to leave that tide. The others seemed still asleep,
without a sound, and only here and there a figure, coming up on the
forecastle, leaned on the rail to watch the proceedings idly.
Without trouble and fuss and almost without a sound was the Ferndale
leaving the land, as if stealing away. Even the tugs, now with
their engines stopped, were approaching her without a ripple, the
burly-looking paddle-boat sheering forward, while the other, a
screw, smaller and of slender shape, made for her quarter so gently
that she did not divide the smooth water, but seemed to glide on its
surface as if on a sheet of plate-glass, a man in her bow, the
master at the wheel visible only from the waist upwards above the
white screen of the bridge, both of them so still-eyed as to
fascinate young Powell into curious self-forgetfulness and
immobility. He was steeped, sunk in the general quietness,
remembering the statement 'she's a lady that mustn't be disturbed,'
and repeating to himself idly: 'No. She won't be disturbed. She
won't be disturbed.' Then the first loud words of that morning
breaking that strange hush of departure with a sharp hail: 'Look
out for that line there,' made him start. The line whizzed past his
head, one of the sailors aft caught it, and there was an end to the
fascination, to the quietness of spirit which had stolen on him at
the very moment of departure. From that moment till two hours
afterwards, when the ship was brought up in one of the lower reaches
of the Thames off an apparently uninhabited shore, near some sort of
inlet where nothing but two anchored barges flying a red flag could
be seen, Powell was too busy to think of the lady 'that mustn't be
disturbed,' or of his captain--or of anything else unconnected with
his immediate duties. In fact, he had no occasion to go on the
poop, or even look that way much; but while the ship was about to
anchor, casting his eyes in that direction, he received an absurd
impression that his captain (he was up there, of course) was sitting
on both sides of the aftermost skylight at once. He was too
occupied to reflect on this curious delusion, this phenomenon of
seeing double as though he had had a drop too much. He only smiled
at himself.
As often happens after a grey daybreak the sun had risen in a warm
and glorious splendour above the smooth immense gleam of the
enlarged estuary. Wisps of mist floated like trails of luminous
dust, and in the dazzling reflections of water and vapour, the
shores had the murky semi-transparent darkness of shadows cast
mysteriously from below. Powell, who had sailed out of London all
his young sea-man's life, told me that it was then, in a moment of
entranced vision an hour or so after sunrise, that the river was
revealed to him for all time, like a fair face often seen before,
which is suddenly perceived to be the expression of an inner and
unsuspected beauty, of that something unique and only its own which
rouses a passion of wonder and fidelity and an unappeasable memory
of its charm. The hull of the Ferndale, swung head to the eastward,
caught the light, her tall spars and rigging steeped in a bath of
red-gold, from the water-line full of glitter to the trucks slight
and gleaming against the delicate expanse of the blue.
"Time we had a mouthful to eat," said a voice at his side. It was
Mr. Franklin, the chief mate, with his head sunk between his
shoulders, and melancholy eyes. "Let the men have their breakfast,
bo'sun," he went on, "and have the fire out in the galley in half an
hour at the latest, so that we can call these barges of explosives
alongside. Come along, young man. I don't know your name. Haven't
seen the captain, to speak to, since yesterday afternoon when he
rushed off to pick up a second mate somewhere. How did he get you?"
Young Powell, a little shy notwithstanding the friendly disposition
of the other, answered him smilingly, aware somehow that there was
something marked in this inquisitiveness, natural, after all--
something anxious. His name was Powell, and he was put in the way
of this berth by Mr. Powell, the shipping master. He blushed.
"Ah, I see. Well, you have been smart in getting ready. The ship-
keeper, before he went away, told me you joined at one o'clock. I
didn't sleep on board last night. Not I. There was a time when I
never cared to leave this ship for more than a couple of hours in
the evening, even while in London, but now, since--"
He checked himself with a roll of his prominent eyes towards that
youngster, that stranger. Meantime, he was leading the way across
the quarter-deck under the poop into the long passage with the door
of the saloon at the far end. It was shut. But Mr. Franklin did
not go so far. After passing the pantry he opened suddenly a door
on the left of the passage, to Powell's great surprise.
"Our mess-room," he said, entering a small cabin painted white,
bare, lighted from part of the foremost skylight, and furnished only
with a table and two settees with movable backs. "That surprises
you? Well, it isn't usual. And it wasn't so in this ship either,
before. It's only since--"
He checked himself again. "Yes. Here we shall feed, you and I,
facing each other for the next twelve months or more--God knows how
much more! The bo'sun keeps the deck at meal-times in fine
weather."
He talked not exactly wheezing, but like a man whose breath is
somewhat short, and the spirit (young Powell could not help
thinking) embittered by some mysterious grievance.
There was enough of the unusual there to be recognized even by
Powell's inexperience. The officers kept out of the cabin against
the custom of the service, and then this sort of accent in the
mate's talk. Franklin did not seem to expect conversational ease
from the new second mate. He made several remarks about the old,
deploring the accident. Awkward. Very awkward this thing to happen
on the very eve of sailing.
"Collar-bone and arm broken," he sighed. "Sad, very sad. Did you
notice if the captain was at all affected? Eh? Must have been."
Before this congested face, these globular eyes turned yearningly
upon him, young Powell (one must keep in mind he was but a youngster
then) who could not remember any signs of visible grief, confessed
with an embarrassed laugh that, owing to the suddenness of this
lucky chance coming to him, he was not in a condition to notice the
state of other people.
"I was so pleased to get a ship at last," he murmured, further
disconcerted by the sort of pent-up gravity in Mr. Franklin's
aspect.
"One man's food another man's poison," the mate remarked. "That
holds true beyond mere victuals. I suppose it didn't occur to you
that it was a dam' poor way for a good man to be knocked out."
Mr. Powell admitted openly that he had not thought of that. He was
ready to admit that it was very reprehensible of him. But Franklin
had no intention apparently to moralize. He did not fall silent
either. His further remarks were to the effect that there had been
a time when Captain Anthony would have showed more than enough
concern for the least thing happening to one of his officers. Yes,
there had been a time!
"And mind," he went on, laying down suddenly a half-consumed piece
of bread and butter and raising his voice, "poor Mathews was the
second man the longest on board. I was the first. He joined a
month later--about the same time as the steward by a few days. The
bo'sun and the carpenter came the voyage after. Steady men. Still
here. No good man need ever have thought of leaving the Ferndale
unless he were a fool. Some good men are fools. Don't know when
they are well off. I mean the best of good men; men that you would
do anything for. They go on for years, then all of a sudden--"
Our young friend listened to the mate with a queer sense of
discomfort growing on him. For it was as though Mr. Franklin were
thinking aloud, and putting him into the delicate position of an
unwilling eavesdropper. But there was in the mess-room another
listener. It was the steward, who had come in carrying a tin
coffee-pot with a long handle, and stood quietly by: a man with a
middle-aged, sallow face, long features, heavy eyelids, a soldierly
grey moustache. His body encased in a short black jacket with
narrow sleeves, his long legs in very tight trousers, made up an
agile, youthful, slender figure. He moved forward suddenly, and
interrupted the mate's monologue.
"More coffee, Mr. Franklin? Nice fresh lot. Piping hot. I am
going to give breakfast to the saloon directly, and the cook is
raking his fire out. Now's your chance."
The mate who, on account of his peculiar build, could not turn his
head freely, twisted his thick trunk slightly, and ran his black
eyes in the corners towards the steward.
"And is the precious pair of them out?" he growled.
The steward, pouring out the coffee into the mate's cup, muttered
moodily but distinctly: "The lady wasn't when I was laying the
table."
Powell's ears were fine enough to detect something hostile in this
reference to the captain's wife. For of what other person could
they be speaking? The steward added with a gloomy sort of fairness:
"But she will be before I bring the dishes in. She never gives that
sort of trouble. That she doesn't."
"No. Not in that way," Mr. Franklin agreed, and then both he and
the steward, after glancing at Powell--the stranger to the ship--
said nothing more.
But this had been enough to rouse his curiosity. Curiosity is
natural to man. Of course it was not a malevolent curiosity which,
if not exactly natural, is to be met fairly frequently in men and
perhaps more frequently in women--especially if a woman be in
question; and that woman under a cloud, in a manner of speaking.
For under a cloud Flora de Barral was fated to be even at sea. Yes.
Even that sort of darkness which attends a woman for whom there is
no clear place in the world hung over her. Yes. Even at sea!
And this is the pathos of being a woman. A man can struggle to get
a place for himself or perish. But a woman's part is passive, say
what you like, and shuffle the facts of the world as you may,
hinting at lack of energy, of wisdom, of courage. As a matter of
fact, almost all women have all that--of their own kind. But they
are not made for attack. Wait they must. I am speaking here of
women who are really women. And it's no use talking of
opportunities, either. I know that some of them do talk of it. But
not the genuine women. Those know better. Nothing can beat a true
woman for a clear vision of reality; I would say a cynical vision if
I were not afraid of wounding your chivalrous feelings--for which,
by the by, women are not so grateful as you may think, to fellows of
your kind . . .
"Upon my word, Marlow," I cried, "what are you flying out at me for
like this? I wouldn't use an ill-sounding word about women, but
what right have you to imagine that I am looking for gratitude?"
Marlow raised a soothing hand.
"There! There! I take back the ill-sounding word, with the remark,
though, that cynicism seems to me a word invented by hypocrites.
But let that pass. As to women, they know that the clamour for
opportunities for them to become something which they cannot be is
as reasonable as if mankind at large started asking for
opportunities of winning immortality in this world, in which death
is the very condition of life. You must understand that I am not
talking here of material existence. That naturally is implied; but
you won't maintain that a woman who, say, enlisted, for instance
(there have been cases) has conquered her place in the world. She
has only got her living in it--which is quite meritorious, but not
quite the same thing.
All these reflections which arise from my picking up the thread of
Flora de Barral's existence did not, I am certain, present
themselves to Mr. Powell--not the Mr. Powell we know taking solitary
week-end cruises in the estuary of the Thames (with mysterious
dashes into lonely creeks) but to the young Mr. Powell, the chance
second officer of the ship Ferndale, commanded (and for the most
part owned) by Roderick Anthony, the son of the poet--you know. A
Mr. Powell, much slenderer than our robust friend is now, with the
bloom of innocence not quite rubbed off his smooth cheeks, and apt
not only to be interested but also to be surprised by the experience
life was holding in store for him. This would account for his
remembering so much of it with considerable vividness. For
instance, the impressions attending his first breakfast on board the
Ferndale, both visual and mental, were as fresh to him as if
received yesterday.
The surprise, it is easy to understand, would arise from the
inability to interpret aright the signs which experience (a thing
mysterious in itself) makes to our understanding and emotions. For
it is never more than that. Our experience never gets into our
blood and bones. It always remains outside of us. That's why we
look with wonder at the past. And this persists even when from
practice and through growing callousness of fibre we come to the
point when nothing that we meet in that rapid blinking stumble
across a flick of sunshine--which our life is--nothing, I say, which
we run against surprises us any more. Not at the time, I mean. If,
later on, we recover the faculty with some such exclamation: 'Well!
Well! I'll be hanged if I ever, . . . ' it is probably because this
very thing that there should be a past to look back upon, other
people's, is very astounding in itself when one has the time, a
fleeting and immense instant to think of it . . . "
I was on the point of interrupting Marlow when he stopped of
himself, his eyes fixed on vacancy, or--perhaps--(I wouldn't be too
hard on him) on a vision. He has the habit, or, say, the fault, of
defective mantelpiece clocks, of suddenly stopping in the very
fulness of the tick. If you have ever lived with a clock afflicted
with that perversity, you know how vexing it is--such a stoppage. I
was vexed with Marlow. He was smiling faintly while I waited. He
even laughed a little. And then I said acidly:
"Am I to understand that you have ferreted out something comic in
the history of Flora de Barral?"
"Comic!" he exclaimed. "No! What makes you say? . . . Oh, I
laughed--did I? But don't you know that people laugh at absurdities
that are very far from being comic? Didn't you read the latest
books about laughter written by philosophers, psychologists? There
is a lot of them . . . "
"I dare say there has been a lot of nonsense written about laughter-
-and tears, too, for that matter," I said impatiently.
"They say," pursued the unabashed Marlow, "that we laugh from a
sense of superiority. Therefore, observe, simplicity, honesty,
warmth of feeling, delicacy of heart and of conduct, self-
confidence, magnanimity are laughed at, because the presence of
these traits in a man's character often puts him into difficult,
cruel or absurd situations, and makes us, the majority who are
fairly free as a rule from these peculiarities, feel pleasantly
superior."
"Speak for yourself," I said. "But have you discovered all these
fine things in the story; or has Mr. Powell discovered them to you
in his artless talk? Have you two been having good healthy laughs
together? Come! Are your sides aching yet, Marlow?"
Marlow took no offence at my banter. He was quite serious.
"I should not like to say off-hand how much of that there was," he
pursued with amusing caution. "But there was a situation, tense
enough for the signs of it to give many surprises to Mr. Powell--
neither of them shocking in itself, but with a cumulative effect
which made the whole unforgettable in the detail of its progress.
And the first surprise came very soon, when the explosives (to which
he owed his sudden chance of engagement)--dynamite in cases and
blasting powder in barrels--taken on board, main hatch battened for
sea, cook restored to his functions in the galley, anchor fished and
the tug ahead, rounding the South Foreland, and with the sun sinking
clear and red down the purple vista of the channel, he went on the
poop, on duty, it is true, but with time to take the first freer
breath in the busy day of departure. The pilot was still on board,
who gave him first a silent glance, and then passed an insignificant
remark before resuming his lounging to and fro between the steering
wheel and the binnacle. Powell took his station modestly at the
break of the poop. He had noticed across the skylight a head in a
grey cap. But when, after a time, he crossed over to the other side
of the deck he discovered that it was not the captain's head at all.
He became aware of grey hairs curling over the nape of the neck.
How could he have made that mistake? But on board ship away from
the land one does not expect to come upon a stranger.
Powell walked past the man. A thin, somewhat sunken face, with a
tightly closed mouth, stared at the distant French coast, vague like
a suggestion of solid darkness, lying abeam beyond the evening light
reflected from the level waters, themselves growing more sombre than
the sky; a stare, across which Powell had to pass and did pass with
a quick side glance, noting its immovable stillness. His passage
disturbed those eyes no more than if he had been as immaterial as a
ghost. And this failure of his person in producing an impression
affected him strangely. Who could that old man be?
He was so curious that he even ventured to ask the pilot in a low
voice. The pilot turned out to be a good-natured specimen of his
kind, condescending, sententious. He had been down to his meals in
the main cabin, and had something to impart.
"That? Queer fish--eh? Mrs. Anthony's father. I've been
introduced to him in the cabin at breakfast time. Name of Smith.
Wonder if he has all his wits about him. They take him about with
them, it seems. Don't look very happy--eh?"
Then, changing his tone abruptly, he desired Powell to get all hands
on deck and make sail on the ship. "I shall be leaving you in half
an hour. You'll have plenty of time to find out all about the old
gent," he added with a thick laugh.
In the secret emotion of giving his first order as a fully
responsible officer, young Powell forgot the very existence of that
old man in a moment. The following days, in the interest of getting
in touch with the ship, with the men in her, with his duties, in the
rather anxious period of settling down, his curiosity slumbered; for
of course the pilot's few words had not extinguished it.
This settling down was made easy for him by the friendly character
of his immediate superior--the chief. Powell could not defend
himself from some sympathy for that thick, bald man, comically
shaped, with his crimson complexion and something pathetic in the
rolling of his very movable black eyes in an apparently immovable
head, who was so tactfully ready to take his competency for granted.
There can be nothing more reassuring to a young man tackling his
life's work for the first time. Mr. Powell, his mind at ease about
himself, had time to observe the people around with friendly
interest. Very early in the beginning of the passage, he had
discovered with some amusement that the marriage of Captain Anthony
was resented by those to whom Powell (conscious of being looked upon
as something of an outsider) referred in his mind as 'the old lot.'
They had the funny, regretful glances, intonations, nods of men who
had seen other, better times. What difference it could have made to
the bo'sun and the carpenter Powell could not very well understand.
Yet these two pulled long faces and even gave hostile glances to the
poop. The cook and the steward might have been more directly
concerned. But the steward used to remark on occasion, 'Oh, she
gives no extra trouble,' with scrupulous fairness of the most gloomy
kind. He was rather a silent man with a great sense of his personal
worth which made his speeches guarded. The cook, a neat man with
fair side whiskers, who had been only three years in the ship,
seemed the least concerned. He was even known to have inquired once
or twice as to the success of some of his dishes with the captain's
wife. This was considered a sort of disloyal falling away from the
ruling feeling.
The mate's annoyance was yet the easiest to understand. As he let
it out to Powell before the first week of the passage was over:
'You can't expect me to be pleased at being chucked out of the
saloon as if I weren't good enough to sit down to meat with that
woman.' But he hastened to add: 'Don't you think I'm blaming the
captain. He isn't a man to be found fault with. You, Mr. Powell,
are too young yet to understand such matters.'
Some considerable time afterwards, at the end of a conversation of
that aggrieved sort, he enlarged a little more by repeating: 'Yes!
You are too young to understand these things. I don't say you
haven't plenty of sense. You are doing very well here. Jolly sight
better than I expected, though I liked your looks from the first.'
It was in the trade-winds, at night, under a velvety, bespangled
sky; a great multitude of stars watching the shadows of the sea
gleaming mysteriously in the wake of the ship; while the leisurely
swishing of the water to leeward was like a drowsy comment on her
progress. Mr. Powell expressed his satisfaction by a half-bashful
laugh. The mate mused on: 'And of course you haven't known the
ship as she used to be. She was more than a home to a man. She was
not like any other ship; and Captain Anthony was not like any other
master to sail with. Neither is she now. But before one never had
a care in the world as to her--and as to him, too. No, indeed,
there was never anything to worry about.'
Young Powell couldn't see what there was to worry about even then.
The serenity of the peaceful night seemed as vast as all space, and
as enduring as eternity itself. It's true the sea is an uncertain
element, but no sailor remembers this in the presence of its
bewitching power any more than a lover ever thinks of the proverbial
inconstancy of women. And Mr. Powell, being young, thought naively
that the captain being married, there could be no occasion for
anxiety as to his condition. I suppose that to him life, perhaps
not so much his own as that of others, was something still in the
nature of a fairy-tale with a 'they lived happy ever after'
termination. We are the creatures of our light literature much more
than is generally suspected in a world which prides itself on being
scientific and practical, and in possession of incontrovertible
theories. Powell felt in that way the more because the captain of a
ship at sea is a remote, inaccessible creature, something like a
prince of a fairy-tale, alone of his kind, depending on nobody, not
to be called to account except by powers practically invisible and
so distant, that they might well be looked upon as supernatural for
all that the rest of the crew knows of them, as a rule.
So he did not understand the aggrieved attitude of the mate--or
rather he understood it obscurely as a result of simple causes which
did not seem to him adequate. He would have dismissed all this out
of his mind with a contemptuous: 'What the devil do I care?' if the
captain's wife herself had not been so young. To see her the first
time had been something of a shock to him. He had some preconceived
ideas as to captain's wives which, while he did not believe the
testimony of his eyes, made him open them very wide. He had stared
till the captain's wife noticed it plainly and turned her face away.
Captain's wife! That girl covered with rugs in a long chair.
Captain's . . . ! He gasped mentally. It had never occurred to him
that a captain's wife could be anything but a woman to be described
as stout or thin, as jolly or crabbed, but always mature, and even,
in comparison with his own years, frankly old. But this! It was a
sort of moral upset as though he had discovered a case of abduction
or something as surprising as that. You understand that nothing is
more disturbing than the upsetting of a preconceived idea. Each of
us arranges the world according to his own notion of the fitness of
things. To behold a girl where your average mediocre imagination
had placed a comparatively old woman may easily become one of the
strongest shocks . . . "
Marlow paused, smiling to himself.
"Powell remained impressed after all these years by the very
recollection," he continued in a voice, amused perhaps but not
mocking. "He said to me only the other day with something like the
first awe of that discovery lingering in his tone--he said to me:
"Why, she seemed so young, so girlish, that I looked round for some
woman which would be the captain's wife, though of course I knew
there was no other woman on board that voyage." The voyage before,
it seems, there had been the steward's wife to act as maid to Mrs.
Anthony; but she was not taken that time for some reason he didn't
know. Mrs. Anthony . . . ! If it hadn't been the captain's wife he
would have referred to her mentally as a kid, he said. I suppose
there must be a sort of divinity hedging in a captain's wife
(however incredible) which prevented him applying to her that
contemptuous definition in the secret of his thoughts.
I asked him when this had happened; and he told me that it was three
days after parting from the tug, just outside the channel--to be
precise. A head wind had set in with unpleasant damp weather. He
had come up to leeward of the poop, still feeling very much of a
stranger, and an untried officer, at six in the evening to take his
watch. To see her was quite as unexpected as seeing a vision. When
she turned away her head he recollected himself and dropped his
eyes. What he could see then was only, close to the long chair on
which she reclined, a pair of long, thin legs ending in black cloth
boots tucked in close to the skylight seat. Whence he concluded
that the 'old gentleman,' who wore a grey cap like the captain's,
was sitting by her--his daughter. In his first astonishment he had
stopped dead short, with the consequence that now he felt very much
abashed at having betrayed his surprise. But he couldn't very well
turn tail and bolt off the poop. He had come there on duty. So,
still with downcast eyes, he made his way past them. Only when he
got as far as the wheel-grating did he look up. She was hidden from
him by the back of her deck-chair; but he had the view of the owner
of the thin, aged legs seated on the skylight, his clean-shaved
cheek, his thin compressed mouth with a hollow in each corner, the
sparse grey locks escaping from under the tweed cap, and curling
slightly on the collar of the coat. He leaned forward a little over
Mrs. Anthony, but they were not talking. Captain Anthony, walking
with a springy hurried gait on the other side of the poop from end
to end, gazed straight before him. Young Powell might have thought
that his captain was not aware of his presence either. However, he
knew better, and for that reason spent a most uncomfortable hour
motionless by the compass before his captain stopped in his swift
pacing and with an almost visible effort made some remark to him
about the weather in a low voice. Before Powell, who was startled,
could find a word of answer, the captain swung off again on his
endless tramp with a fixed gaze. And till the supper bell rang
silence dwelt over that poop like an evil spell. The captain walked
up and down looking straight before him, the helmsman steered,
looking upwards at the sails, the old gent on the skylight looked
down on his daughter--and Mr. Powell confessed to me that he didn't
know where to look, feeling as though he had blundered in where he
had no business--which was absurd. At last he fastened his eyes on
the compass card, took refuge, in spirit, inside the binnacle. He
felt chilled more than he should have been by the chilly dusk
falling on the muddy green sea of the soundings from a smoothly
clouded sky. A fitful wind swept the cheerless waste, and the ship,
hauled up so close as to check her way, seemed to progress by
languid fits and starts against the short seas which swept along her
sides with a snarling sound.
Young Powell thought that this was the dreariest evening aspect of
the sea he had ever seen. He was glad when the other occupants of
the poop left it at the sound of the bell. The captain first, with
a sudden swerve in his walk towards the companion, and not even
looking once towards his wife and his wife's father. Those two got
up and moved towards the companion, the old gent very erect, his
thin locks stirring gently about the nape of his neck, and carrying
the rugs over his arm. The girl who was Mrs. Anthony went down
first. The murky twilight had settled in deep shadow on her face.
She looked at Mr. Powell in passing. He thought that she was very
pale. Cold perhaps. The old gent stopped a moment, thin and stiff,
before the young man, and in a voice which was low but distinct
enough, and without any particular accent--not even of inquiry--he
said:
"You are the new second officer, I believe."
Mr. Powell answered in the affirmative, wondering if this were a
friendly overture. He had noticed that Mr. Smith's eyes had a sort
of inward look as though he had disliked or disdained his
surroundings. The captain's wife had disappeared then down the
companion stairs. Mr. Smith said 'Ah!' and waited a little longer
to put another question in his incurious voice.
"And did you know the man who was here before you?"
"No," said young Powell, "I didn't know anybody belonging to this
ship before I joined."
"He was much older than you. Twice your age. Perhaps more. His
hair was iron grey. Yes. Certainly more."
The low, repressed voice paused, but the old man did not move away.
He added: "Isn't it unusual?"
Mr. Powell was surprised not only by being engaged in conversation,
but also by its character. It might have been the suggestion of the
word uttered by this old man, but it was distinctly at that moment
that he became aware of something unusual not only in this encounter
but generally around him, about everybody, in the atmosphere. The
very sea, with short flashes of foam bursting out here and there in
the gloomy distances, the unchangeable, safe sea sheltering a man
from all passions, except its own anger, seemed queer to the quick
glance he threw to windward where the already effaced horizon traced
no reassuring limit to the eye. In the expiring, diffused twilight,
and before the clouded night dropped its mysterious veil, it was the
immensity of space made visible--almost palpable. Young Powell felt
it. He felt it in the sudden sense of his isolation; the
trustworthy, powerful ship of his first acquaintance reduced to a
speck, to something almost undistinguishable, the mere support for
the soles of his two feet before that unexpected old man becoming so
suddenly articulate in a darkening universe.
It took him a moment or so to seize the drift of the question. He
repeated slowly: 'Unusual . . . Oh, you mean for an elderly man to
be the second of a ship. I don't know. There are a good many of us
who don't get on. He didn't get on, I suppose.'
The other, his head bowed a little, had the air of listening with
acute attention.
"And now he has been taken to the hospital," he said.
"I believe so. Yes. I remember Captain Anthony saying so in the
shipping office."
"Possibly about to die," went on the old man, in his careful
deliberate tone. "And perhaps glad enough to die."
Mr. Powell was young enough to be startled at the suggestion, which
sounded confidential and blood-curdling in the dusk. He said
sharply that it was not very likely, as if defending the absent
victim of the accident from an unkind aspersion. He felt, in fact,
indignant. The other emitted a short stifled laugh of a
conciliatory nature. The second bell rang under the poop. He made
a movement at the sound, but lingered.
"What I said was not meant seriously," he murmured, with that
strange air of fearing to be overheard. "Not in this case. I know
the man."
The occasion, or rather the want of occasion, for this conversation,
had sharpened the perceptions of the unsophisticated second officer
of the Ferndale. He was alive to the slightest shade of tone, and
felt as if this "I know the man" should have been followed by a "he
was no friend of mine." But after the shortest possible break the
old gentleman continued to murmur distinctly and evenly:
"Whereas you have never seen him. Nevertheless, when you have gone
through as many years as I have, you will understand how an event
putting an end to one's existence may not be altogether unwelcome.
Of course there are stupid accidents. And even then one needn't be
very angry. What is it to be deprived of life? It's soon done.
But what would you think of the feelings of a man who should have
had his life stolen from him? Cheated out of it, I say!"
He ceased abruptly, and remained still long enough for the
astonished Powell to stammer out an indistinct: "What do you mean?
I don't understand." Then, with a low 'Good-night' glided a few
steps, and sank through the shadow of the companion into the
lamplight below which did not reach higher than the turn of the
staircase.
The strange words, the cautious tone, the whole person left a strong
uneasiness in the mind of Mr. Powell. He started walking the poop
in great mental confusion. He felt all adrift. This was funny talk
and no mistake. And this cautious low tone as though he were
watched by someone was more than funny. The young second officer
hesitated to break the established rule of every ship's discipline;
but at last could not resist the temptation of getting hold of some
other human being, and spoke to the man at the wheel.
"Did you hear what this gentleman was saying to me?"
"No, sir," answered the sailor quietly. Then, encouraged by this
evidence of laxity in his officer, made bold to add, "A queer fish,
sir." This was tentative, and Mr. Powell, busy with his own view,
not saying anything, he ventured further. "They are more like
passengers. One sees some queer passengers."
"Who are like passengers?" asked Powell gruffly.
"Why, these two, sir."
Content of PART II - THE KNIGHT CHAPTER TWO - YOUNG POWELL SEES AND HEARS [Joseph Conrad's novel: Chance]
_
Read next: PART II - THE KNIGHT: CHAPTER THREE - DEVOTED SERVANTS - AND THE LIGHT OF A FLARE
Read previous: PART II - THE KNIGHT: CHAPTER ONE - THE FERNDALE
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