Chance, Page 2

  “He was,” assented Marlow. “And a true friend of youth. He lectured them in a peculiarly exasperating manner. It was a way he had.”

  “Then give me Powell every time,” declared our new acquaintance sturdily. “He didn’t lecture me in any way. Not he. He said: ‘How do you do?’ quite kindly to my mumble. Then says he looking very hard at me: ‘I don’t think I know you—do I?’

  “‘No, sir,’ I said and down went my heart sliding into my boots, just as the time had come to summon up all my cheek. There’s nothing meaner in the world than a piece of impudence that isn’t carried off well. For fear of appearing shamefaced I started about it so free and easy as almost to frighten myself. He listened for a while looking at my face with surprise and curiosity and then held up his hand. I was glad enough to shut up, I can tell you.

  “‘Well, you are a cool hand,’ says he. ‘And that friend of yours too. He pestered me coming here every day for a fortnight till a captain I’m acquainted with was good enough to give him a berth. And no sooner he’s provided for than he turns you on. You youngsters don’t seem to mind whom you get into trouble.’

  “It was my turn now to stare with surprise and curiosity. He hadn’t been talking loud but he lowered his voice still more.

  “‘Don’t you know it’s illegal?’

  “I wondered what he was driving at till I remembered that procuring a berth for a sailor is a penal offence under the Act. That clause was directed of course against the swindling practices of the boarding-house crimps. It had never struck me it would apply to everybody alike no matter what the motive, because I believed then that people on shore did their work with care and foresight.

  “I was confounded at the idea, but Mr Powell made me soon see that an Act of Parliament hasn’t any sense of its own. It has only the sense that’s put into it; and that’s precious little sometimes. He didn’t mind helping a young man to a ship now and then, he said, but if we kept on coming constantly it would soon get about that he was doing it for money.

  “‘A pretty thing that would be: the Senior Shipping Master of the Port of London hauled up in a police court and fined fifty pounds,’ says he. ‘I’ve another four years to serve to get my pension. It could be made to look very black against me and don’t you make any mistake about it,’ he says.

  “And all the time with one knee well up he went on swinging his other leg like a boy on a gate and looking at me very straight with his shining eyes. I was confounded I tell you. It made me sick to hear him imply that somebody would make a report against him.

  “‘Oh!’—I asked shocked, ‘who would think of such a scurvy trick, sir?’ I was half disgusted with him for having the mere notion of it.

  “‘Who?’ says he, speaking very low. ‘Anybody. One of the office messengers maybe. I’ve risen to be the Senior of this office and we are all very good friends here, but don’t you think that my colleague that sits next to me wouldn’t like to go up to this desk by the window four years in advance of the regulation time? Or even one year for that matter. It’s human nature.’

  “I could not help turning my head. The three fellows who had been skylarking when I came in were now talking together very soberly, and the long-necked chap was going on with his writing still. He seemed to me the most dangerous of the lot. I saw him side-face and his lips were set very tight. I had never looked at mankind in that light before. When one’s young human nature shocks one. But what startled me most was to see the door I had come through open slowly and give passage to a head in a uniform cap with a Board of Trade badge. It was that blamed old doorkeeper from the hall. He had run me to earth and meant to dig me out too. He walked up the office smirking craftily, cap in hand.

  “‘What is it, Symons?’ asked Mr Powell.

  “‘I was only wondering where this ’ere gentleman ’ad gone to, sir. He slipped past me upstairs, sir.’

  “I felt mighty uncomfortable.

  “‘That’s all right, Symons. I know the gentleman,’ says Mr Powell as serious as a judge.

  “‘Very well, sir. Of course, sir. I saw the gentleman running races all by ’isself down ’ere, so I...’

  “‘It’s all right I tell you,’ Mr Powell cut him short with a wave of his hand; and, as the old fraud walked off at last, he raised his eyes to me. I did not know what to do: stay there, or clear out, or say that I was sorry.

  “‘Let’s see,’ says he, ‘what did you tell me your name was?’

  “Now, observe, I hadn’t given him my name at all and his question embarrassed me a bit. Somehow or other it didn’t seem proper for me to fling his own name at him as it were. So I merely pulled out my new certificate from my pocket and put it into his hand unfolded, so that he could read Charles Powell written very plain on the parchment.

  “He dropped his eyes on to it and after a while laid it quietly on the desk by his side. I didn’t know whether he meant to make any remark on this coincidence. Before he had time to say anything the glass door came open with a bang and a tall, active man rushed in with great strides. His face looked very red below his high silk hat. You could see at once he was the skipper of a big ship.

  “Mr Powell, after telling me in an undertone to wait a little, addressed him in a friendly way.

  “‘I’ve been expecting you in every moment to fetch away your Articles, Captain. Here they are all ready for you.’ And turning to a pile of agreements lying at his elbow he took up the topmost of them. From where I stood I could read the words: ‘Ship Ferndale’ written in a large round hand on the first page.

  “‘No, Mr Powell, they aren’t ready, worse luck,’ says that skipper. ‘I’ve got to ask you to strike out my second officer.’ He seemed excited and bothered. He explained that his second mate had been working on board all the morning. At one o’clock he went out to get a bit of dinner and didn’t turn up at two as he ought to have done. Instead there came a messenger from the hospital with a note signed by a doctor. Collar-bone and one arm broken. Let himself be knocked down by a pair-horse van while crossing the road outside the dock gate, as if he had neither eyes nor ears. And the ship ready to leave the dock at six o’clock to-morrow morning!

  “Mr Powell dipped his pen and began to turn the leaves of the agreement over. ‘We must then take his name off,’ he says in a kind of unconcerned sing-song.

  “‘What am I to do?’ burst out the skipper. ‘This office closes at four o’clock. I can’t find a man in half an hour.’

  “‘This office closes at four,’ repeats Mr Powell glancing up and down the pages and touching up a letter here and there with perfect indifference.

  “‘Even if I managed to lay hold some time to-day of a man ready to go at such short notice I couldn’t ship him regularly here—could I?’

  “Mr Powell was busy drawing his pen through the entries relating to that unlucky second mate and making a note in the margin.

  “‘You could sign him on yourself on board,’ says he without looking up. ‘But I don’t think you’ll find easily an officer for such a pier-head jump.’

  “Upon this the fine-looking skipper gave signs of distress. The ship mustn’t miss the next morning’s tide. He had to take on board forty tons of dynamite and a hundred and twenty tons of gunpowder at a place down the river before proceeding to sea. It was all arranged for next day. There would be no end of fuss and complications if the ship didn’t turn up in time.—I couldn’t help hearing all this, while wishing him to take himself off, because I wanted to know why Mr Powell had told me to wait. After what he had been saying there didn’t seem any object in my hanging about. If I had had my certificate in my pocket I should have tried to slip away quietly; but Mr Powell had turned about into the same position I found him in at first and was again swinging his leg. My certificate open on the desk was under his left elbow and I couldn’t very well go up and jerk it away.

  “‘I don’t know,’ says he carelessly, addressing the helpless captain but looking fixedly at me with an expression as if I hadn
’t been there. ‘I don’t know whether I ought to tell you that I know of a disengaged second mate at hand.’

  “‘Do you mean you’ve got him here?’ shouts the other looking all over the empty public part of the office as if he were ready to fling himself bodily upon anything resembling a second mate. He had been so full of his difficulty that I verily believe he had never noticed me. Or perhaps seeing me inside he may have thought I was some understrapper belonging to the place. But when Mr Powell nodded in my direction he became very quiet and gave me a long stare. Then he stooped to Mr Powell’s ear—I suppose he imagined he was whispering, but I heard him well enough.

  “‘Looks very respectable.’

  “‘Certainly,’ says the Shipping Master quite calm and staring all the time at me. ‘His name’s Powell.’

  “‘Oh, I see!’ says the skipper as if struck all of a heap. ‘But is he ready to join at once?’

  “I had a sort of vision of my lodgings—in the North of London, too, beyond Dalston, away to the devil—and all my gear scattered about, and my empty sea-chest somewhere in an outhouse the good people I was staying with had at the end of their sooty strip of garden. I heard the Shipping Master say in the coolest sort of way:—

  “‘He’ll sleep on board to-night.’

  “‘He had better,’ says the Captain of the Ferndale very businesslike, as if the whole thing were settled. I can’t say I was dumb for joy as you may suppose. It wasn’t exactly that. I was more by way of being out of breath with the quickness of it. It didn’t seem possible that this was happening to me. But the skipper, after he had talked for a while with Mr Powell, too low for me to hear became visibly perplexed.

  “I suppose he had heard I was freshly passed and without experience as an officer, because he turned about and looked me over as if I had been exposed for sale.

  “‘He’s young,’ he mutters. ‘Looks smart, though... You’re smart and willing (this to me very sudden and loud) and all that, aren’t you?’

  “I just managed to open and shut my mouth, no more, being taken unawares. But it was enough for him. He made as if I had deafened him with protestations of my smartness and willingness.

  “‘Of course, of course. All right.’ And then turning to the Shipping Master who sat there swinging his leg, he said that he certainly couldn’t go to sea without a second officer. I stood by as if all these things were happening to some other chap whom I was seeing through with it. Mr Powell stared at me with those shining eyes of his. But that bothered skipper turns upon me again as though he wanted to snap my head off.

  “‘You aren’t too big to be told how to do things—are you? You’ve a lot to learn yet though you mayn’t think so.’

  “I had half a mind to save my dignity by telling him that if it was my seamanship he was alluding to I wanted him to understand that a fellow who had survived being turned inside out for an hour and a half by Captain R— was equal to any demand his old ship was likely to make on his competence. However he didn’t give me a chance to make that sort of fool of myself because before I could open my mouth he had gone round on another tack and was addressing himself affably to Mr Powell who swinging his leg never took his eyes off me.

  “‘I’ll take your young friend willingly, Mr Powell. If you let him sign on as second mate at once I’ll take the Articles away with me now.’

  “It suddenly dawned upon me that the innocent skipper of the Ferndale had taken it for granted that I was a relative of the Shipping Master! I was quite astonished at this discovery, though indeed the mistake was natural enough under the circumstances. What I ought to have admired was the reticence with which this misunderstanding had been established and acted upon. But I was too stupid then to admire anything. All my anxiety was that this should be cleared up. I was ass enough to wonder exceedingly at Mr Powell failing to notice the misapprehension. I saw a slight twitch come and go on his face; but instead of setting right that mistake the Shipping Master swung round on his stool and addressed me as ‘Charles.’ He did. And I detected him taking a hasty squint at my certificate just before, because clearly till he did so he was not sure of my christian name. ‘Now then come round in front of the desk, Charles,’ says he in a loud voice.

  “Charles! At first, I declare to you, it didn’t seem possible that he was addressing himself to me. I even looked round for that Charles but there was nobody behind me except the thin-necked chap still hard at his writing, and the other three Shipping Masters who were changing their coats and reaching for their hats, making ready to go home. It was the industrious thin-necked man who without laying down his pen lifted with his left hand a flap near his desk and said kindly:—

  “‘Pass this way.’

  “I walked through in a trance, faced Mr Powell, from whom I learned that we were bound to Port Elizabeth first, and signed my name on the Articles of the ship Ferndale as second mate—the voyage not to exceed two years.

  “‘You won’t fail to join—eh?’ says the captain anxiously. ‘It would cause no end of trouble and expense if you did. You’ve got a good six hours to get your gear together, and then you’ll have time to snatch a sleep on board before the crew joins in the morning.’

  “It was easy enough for him to talk of getting ready in six hours for a voyage that was not to exceed two years. He hadn’t to do that trick himself, and with his sea-chest locked up in an outhouse the key of which had been mislaid for a week as I remembered. But neither was I much concerned. The idea that I was absolutely going to sea at six o’clock next morning hadn’t got quite into my head yet. It had been too sudden.

  “Mr Powell, slipping the Articles into a long envelope, spoke up with a sort of cold half-laugh without looking at either of us.

  “‘Mind you don’t disgrace the name, Charles.’

  “And the skipper chimes in very kindly:—

  “‘He’ll do well enough I dare say. I’ll look after him a bit.’

  “Upon this he grabs the Articles, says something about trying to run in for a minute to see that poor devil in the hospital, and off he goes with his heavy swinging step after telling me sternly: ‘Don’t you go like that poor fellow and get yourself run over by a cart as if you hadn’t either eyes or ears.’

  “‘Mr Powell,’ says I timidly (there was by then only the thin-necked man left in the office with us and he was already by the door, standing on one leg to turn the bottom of his trousers up before going away). ‘Mr Powell,’ says I, ‘I believe the Captain of the Ferndale was thinking all the time that I was a relation of yours.’

  “I was rather concerned about the propriety of it, you know, but Mr Powell didn’t seem to be in the least.

  “‘Did he?’ says he. ‘That’s funny, because it seems to me too that I’ve been a sort of good uncle to several of you young fellows lately. Don’t you think so yourself? However, if you don’t like it you may put him right—when you get out to sea.’ At this I felt a bit queer. Mr Powell had rendered me a very good service:—because it’s a fact that with us merchant sailors the first voyage as officer is the real start in life. He had given me no less than that. I told him warmly that he had done for me more that day than all my relations put together ever did.

  “‘Oh, no, no,’ says he. ‘I guess it’s that shipment of explosives waiting down the river which has done most for you. Forty tons of dynamite have been your best friend to-day, young man.’

  “That was true too, perhaps. Anyway I saw clearly enough that I had nothing to thank myself for. But as I tried to thank him, he checked my stammering.

  “‘Don’t be in a hurry to thank me,’ says he. ‘The voyage isn’t finished yet.’

  “Our new acquaintance paused, then added meditatively: ‘Queer man. As if it made any difference. Queer man.’”

  “It’s certainly unwise to admit any sort of responsibility for our actions, whose consequences we are never able to foresee,” remarked Marlow by way of assent.

  “The consequence of his action was that I got a ship,�
�� said the other. “That could not do much harm,” he added with a laugh which argued a probably unconscious contempt of general ideas.

  But Marlow was not put off. He was patient and reflective. He had been at sea many years and I verily believe he liked sea-life because upon the whole it is favourable to reflection. I am speaking of the now nearly vanished sea-life under sail. To those who may be surprised at the statement I will point out that this life secured for the mind of him who embraced it the inestimable advantages of solitude and silence. Marlow had the habit of pursuing general ideas in a peculiar manner, between jest and earnest.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t suggest,” he said, “that your namesake Mr Powell, the Shipping Master, had done you much harm. Such was hardly his intention. And even if it had been he would not have had the power. He was but a man, and the incapacity to achieve anything distinctly good or evil is inherent in our earthly condition. Mediocrity is our mark. And perhaps it’s just as well, since, for the most part, we cannot be certain of the effect of our actions.”

  “I don’t know about the effect,” the other stood up to Marlow manfully. “What effect did you expect anyhow? I tell you he did something uncommonly kind.”

  “He did what he could,” Marlow retorted gently, “and on his own showing that was not a very great deal. I cannot help thinking that there was some malice in the way he seized the opportunity to serve you. He managed to make you uncomfortable. You wanted to go to sea, but he jumped at the chance of accommodating your desire with a vengeance. I am inclined to think your cheek alarmed him. And this was an excellent occasion to suppress you altogether. For if you accepted he was relieved of you with every appearance of humanity, and if you made objections (after requesting his assistance, mind you) it was open to him to drop you as a sort of impostor. You might have had to decline that berth for some very valid reason. From sheer necessity perhaps! The notice was too uncommonly short. But under the circumstances you’d have covered yourself with ignominy.”