 |
| http://news.stanford.edu/2016/04/18/another-look-book-club-spotlights-joseph-conrads-shadow-line-novella/ |
In his 1920 preface to the collection A Set of Six, Conrad discusses the
source material for "The Brute."
The Brute, which is the
only sea-story in the volume, is, like Il Conde, associated with a direct
narrative and based on a suggestion gathered on warm human lips. I will not
disclose the real name of the criminal ship but the first I heard of her
homicidal habits was from the late Captain Blake, commanding a London ship in
which I served in 1884 as Second Officer. Captain Blake was, of all my
commanders, the one I remember with the greatest affection. I have sketched in
his personality, without however mentioning his name, in the first paper of The
Mirror of the Sea. In his young days he had had a personal experience of the
brute and it is perhaps for that reason that I have put the story into the
mouth of a young man and made of it what the reader will see. The existence of
the brute was a fact. The end of the brute as related in the story is also a
fact, well-known at the time though it really happened to another ship, of
great beauty of form and of blameless character, which certainly deserved a
better fate. I have unscrupulously adapted it to the needs of my story thinking
that I had there something in the nature of poetical justice. I hope that
little villainy will not cast a shadow upon the general honesty of my
proceedings as a writer of tales.
The story may be drawn from "warm human
lips," but "The Brute" is a story of dread, damp, cold sea
water, shattered spars and hulls, split canvas, and broken and drowned corpses.
Its uncanny atmosphere recalls the power of
William Hope Hodgson's finest novel, The
Ghost Pirates [1909]. But where Hodgson's novel prioritizes a supernatural
doom, Conrad gives us a ship not as victim but as homicidal lunatic.
….They called it the
launch of a ship, but I’ve heard people say that, from the wailing and yelling
and scrambling out of the way, it was more like letting a devil loose upon the
river. She snapped all her checks like pack-thread, and went for the tugs in
attendance like a fury. Before anybody could see what she was up to she sent
one of them to the bottom, and laid up another for three months’ repairs. One
of her cables parted, and then, suddenly—you couldn’t tell why—she let herself
be brought up with the other as quiet as a lamb.
“That’s how she was.
You could never be sure what she would be up to next. There are ships difficult
to handle, but generally you can depend on them behaving rationally. With that
ship, whatever you did with her you never knew how it would end. She was a
wicked beast. Or, perhaps, she was only just insane.”
He uttered this
supposition in so earnest a tone that I could not refrain from smiling. He left
off biting his lower lip to apostrophize me.
“Eh! Why not? Why
couldn’t there be something in her build, in her lines corresponding to—What’s
madness? Only something just a tiny bit wrong in the make of your brain. Why
shouldn’t there be a mad ship—I mean mad in a ship-like way, so that under no
circumstances could you be sure she would do what any other sensible ship would
naturally do for you. There are ships that steer wildly, and ships that can’t
be quite trusted always to stay; others want careful watching when running in a
gale; and, again, there may be a ship that will make heavy weather of it in
every little blow. But then you expect her to be always so. You take it as part
of her character, as a ship, just as you take account of a man’s peculiarities
of temper when you deal with him. But with her you couldn’t. She was
unaccountable. If she wasn’t mad, then she was the most evil-minded, underhand,
savage brute that ever went afloat. I’ve seen her run in a heavy gale
beautifully for two days, and on the third broach to twice in the same
afternoon. The first time she flung the helmsman clean over the wheel, but as
she didn’t quite manage to kill him she had another try about three hours
afterwards. She swamped herself fore and aft, burst all the canvas we had set,
scared all hands into a panic, and even frightened Mrs. Colchester down there
in these beautiful stern cabins that she was so proud of. When we mustered the
crew there was one man missing. Swept overboard, of course, without being
either seen or heard, poor devil! and I only wonder more of us didn’t go.
“Always something like
that. Always. I heard an old mate tell Captain Colchester once that it had come
to this with him, that he was afraid to open his mouth to give any sort of
order. She was as much of a terror in harbour as at sea. You could never be
certain what would hold her. On the slightest provocation she would start
snapping ropes, cables, wire hawsers, like carrots. She was heavy, clumsy,
unhandy—but that does not quite explain that power for mischief she had. You
know, somehow, when I think of her I can’t help remembering what we hear of
incurable lunatics breaking loose now and then.”
Jay
2/23/17
Joseph Conrad
Dodging in from the
rain-swept street, I exchanged a smile and a glance with Miss Blank in the bar
of the Three Crows. This exchange was effected with extreme propriety. It is a
shock to think that, if still alive, Miss Blank must be something over sixty
now. How time passes!
Noticing my gaze
directed inquiringly at the partition of glass and varnished wood, Miss Blank
was good enough to say, encouragingly:
“Only Mr. Jermyn and
Mr. Stonor in the parlour with another gentleman I’ve never seen before.”
I moved towards the
parlour door. A voice discoursing on the other side (it was but a matchboard
partition), rose so loudly that the concluding words became quite plain in all
their atrocity.
“That fellow Wilmot
fairly dashed her brains out, and a good job, too!”
This inhuman sentiment,
since there was nothing profane or improper in it, failed to do as much as to
check the slight yawn Miss Blank was achieving behind her hand. And she
remained gazing fixedly at the window-panes, which streamed with rain.
As I opened the parlour
door the same voice went on in the same cruel strain:
“I was glad when I
heard she got the knock from somebody at last. Sorry enough for poor Wilmot,
though. That man and I used to be chums at one time. Of course that was the end
of him. A clear case if there ever was one. No way out of it. None at all.”
The voice belonged to
the gentleman Miss Blank had never seen before. He straddled his long legs on
the hearthrug. Jermyn, leaning forward, held his pocket-handkerchief spread out
before the grate. He looked back dismally over his shoulder, and as I slipped
behind one of the little wooden tables, I nodded to him. On the other side of
the fire, imposingly calm and large, sat Mr. Stonor, jammed tight into a
capacious Windsor armchair. There was nothing small about him but his short,
white side-whiskers. Yards and yards of extra superfine blue cloth (made up
into an overcoat) reposed on a chair by his side. And he must just have brought
some liner from sea, because another chair was smothered under his black
waterproof, ample as a pall, and made of three-fold oiled silk, double-stitched
throughout. A man’s hand-bag of the usual size looked like a child’s toy on the
floor near his feet.
I did not nod to him.
He was too big to be nodded to in that parlour. He was a senior Trinity pilot
and condescended to take his turn in the cutter only during the summer months.
He had been many times in charge of royal yachts in and out of Port Victoria.
Besides, it’s no use nodding to a monument. And he was like one. He didn’t
speak, he didn’t budge. He just sat there, holding his handsome old head up,
immovable, and almost bigger than life. It was extremely fine. Mr. Stonor’s
presence reduced poor old Jermyn to a mere shabby wisp of a man, and made the
talkative stranger in tweeds on the hearthrug look absurdly boyish. The latter
must have been a few years over thirty, and was certainly not the sort of
individual that gets abashed at the sound of his own voice, because gathering
me in, as it were, by a friendly glance, he kept it going without a check.
“I was glad of it,” he
repeated, emphatically. “You may be surprised at it, but then you haven’t gone
through the experience I’ve had of her. I can tell you, it was something to
remember. Of course, I got off scot free myself—as you can see. She did her
best to break up my pluck for me tho’. She jolly near drove as fine a fellow as
ever lived into a madhouse. What do you say to that—eh?”
Not an eyelid twitched
in Mr. Stonor’s enormous face. Monumental! The speaker looked straight into my
eyes.
“It used to make me
sick to think of her going about the world murdering people.”
Jermyn approached the
handkerchief a little nearer to the grate and groaned. It was simply a habit he
had.
“I’ve seen her once,”
he declared, with mournful indifference. “She had a house—”
The stranger in tweeds
turned to stare down at him, surprised.
“She had three houses,”
he corrected, authoritatively. But Jermyn was not to be contradicted.
“She had a house, I
say,” he repeated, with dismal obstinacy. “A great, big, ugly, white thing. You
could see it from miles away—sticking up.”
“So you could,”
assented the other readily. “It was old Colchester’s notion, though he was
always threatening to give her up. He couldn’t stand her racket any more, he
declared; it was too much of a good thing for him; he would wash his hands of
her, if he never got hold of another—and so on. I daresay he would have chucked
her, only—it may surprise you—his missus wouldn’t hear of it. Funny, eh? But
with women, you never know how they will take a thing, and Mrs. Colchester,
with her moustaches and big eyebrows, set up for being as strong-minded as they
make them. She used to walk about in a brown silk dress, with a great gold
cable flopping about her bosom. You should have heard her snapping out:
‘Rubbish!’ or ‘Stuff and nonsense!’ I daresay she knew when she was well off.
They had no children, and had never set up a home anywhere. When in England she
just made shift to hang out anyhow in some cheap hotel or boarding-house. I
daresay she liked to get back to the comforts she was used to. She knew very
well she couldn’t gain by any change. And, moreover, Colchester, though a
first-rate man, was not what you may call in his first youth, and, perhaps, she
may have thought that he wouldn’t be able to get hold of another (as he used to
say) so easily. Anyhow, for one reason or another, it was ‘Rubbish’ and ‘Stuff
and nonsense’ for the good lady. I overheard once young Mr. Apse himself say to
her confidentially: ‘I assure you, Mrs. Colchester, I am beginning to feel
quite unhappy about the name she’s getting for herself.’ ‘Oh,’ says she, with
her deep little hoarse laugh, ‘if one took notice of all the silly talk,’ and
she showed Apse all her ugly false teeth at once. ‘It would take more than that
to make me lose my confidence in her, I assure you,’ says she.”
At this point, without
any change of facial expression, Mr. Stonor emitted a short, sardonic laugh. It
was very impressive, but I didn’t see the fun. I looked from one to another.
The stranger on the hearthrug had an ugly smile.
“And Mr. Apse shook
both Mrs. Colchester’s hands, he was so pleased to hear a good word said for
their favourite. All these Apses, young and old you know, were perfectly
infatuated with that abominable, dangerous—”
“I beg your pardon,” I
interrupted, for he seemed to be addressing himself exclusively to me; “but who
on earth are you talking about?”
“I am talking of the
Apse family,” he answered, courteously.
I nearly let out a damn
at this. But just then the respected Miss Blank put her head in, and said that
the cab was at the door, if Mr. Stonor wanted to catch the eleven three up.
At once the senior
pilot arose in his mighty bulk and began to struggle into his coat, with
awe-inspiring upheavals. The stranger and I hurried impulsively to his
assistance, and directly we laid our hands on him he became perfectly
quiescent. We had to raise our arms very high, and to make efforts. It was like
caparisoning a docile elephant. With a “Thanks, gentlemen,” he dived under and
squeezed himself through the door in a great hurry.
We smiled at each other
in a friendly way.
“I wonder how he
manages to hoist himself up a ship’s side-ladder,” said the man in tweeds; and
poor Jermyn, who was a mere North Sea pilot, without official status or
recognition of any sort, pilot only by courtesy, groaned.
“He makes eight hundred
a year.”
“Are you a sailor?” I
asked the stranger, who had gone back to his position on the rug.
“I used to be till a
couple of years ago, when I got married,” answered this communicative
individual. “I even went to sea first in that very ship we were speaking of
when you came in.”
“What ship?” I asked,
puzzled. “I never heard you mention a ship.”
“I’ve just told you her
name, my dear sir,” he replied. “The Apse Family. Surely you’ve heard of the
great firm of Apse & Sons, shipowners. They had a pretty big fleet. There
was the Lucy Apse, and the Harold Apse, and Anne, John, Malcolm, Clara, Juliet,
and so on—no end of Apses. Every brother, sister, aunt, cousin, wife—and
grandmother, too, for all I know—of the firm had a ship named after them. Good,
solid, old-fashioned craft they were, too, built to carry and to last. None of
your new-fangled, labour-saving appliances in them, but plenty of men and
plenty of good salt beef and hard tack put aboard—and off you go to fight your
way out and home again.”
The miserable Jermyn
made a sound of approval, which sounded like a groan of pain. Those were the
ships for him. He pointed out in doleful tones that you couldn’t say to
labour-saving appliances: “Jump lively now, my hearties.” No labour-saving
appliance would go aloft on a dirty night with the sands under your lee.
“No,” assented the stranger,
with a wink at me. “The Apses didn’t believe in them either, apparently. They
treated their people well—as people don’t get treated nowadays, and they were
awfully proud of their ships. Nothing ever happened to them. This last one, the
Apse Family, was to be like the others, only she was to be still stronger,
still safer, still more roomy and comfortable. I believe they meant her to last
for ever. They had her built composite—iron, teak-wood, and greenheart, and her
scantling was something fabulous. If ever an order was given for a ship in a
spirit of pride this one was. Everything of the best. The commodore captain of
the employ was to command her, and they planned the accommodation for him like
a house on shore under a big, tall poop that went nearly to the mainmast. No
wonder Mrs. Colchester wouldn’t let the old man give her up. Why, it was the
best home she ever had in all her married days. She had a nerve, that woman.
“The fuss that was made
while that ship was building! Let’s have this a little stronger, and that a
little heavier; and hadn’t that other thing better be changed for something a
little thicker. The builders entered into the spirit of the game, and there she
was, growing into the clumsiest, heaviest ship of her size right before all their
eyes, without anybody becoming aware of it somehow. She was to be 2,000 tons
register, or a little over; no less on any account. But see what happens. When
they came to measure her she turned out 1,999 tons and a fraction. General
consternation! And they say old Mr. Apse was so annoyed when they told him that
he took to his bed and died. The old gentleman had retired from the firm
twenty-five years before, and was ninety-six years old if a day, so his death
wasn’t, perhaps, so surprising. Still Mr. Lucian Apse was convinced that his
father would have lived to a hundred. So we may put him at the head of the
list. Next comes the poor devil of a shipwright that brute caught and squashed
as she went off the ways. They called it the launch of a ship, but I’ve heard
people say that, from the wailing and yelling and scrambling out of the way, it
was more like letting a devil loose upon the river. She snapped all her checks
like pack-thread, and went for the tugs in attendance like a fury. Before
anybody could see what she was up to she sent one of them to the bottom, and
laid up another for three months’ repairs. One of her cables parted, and then,
suddenly—you couldn’t tell why—she let herself be brought up with the other as
quiet as a lamb.
“That’s how she was.
You could never be sure what she would be up to next. There are ships difficult
to handle, but generally you can depend on them behaving rationally. With that
ship, whatever you did with her you never knew how it would end. She was a
wicked beast. Or, perhaps, she was only just insane.”
He uttered this
supposition in so earnest a tone that I could not refrain from smiling. He left
off biting his lower lip to apostrophize me.
“Eh! Why not? Why
couldn’t there be something in her build, in her lines corresponding to—What’s
madness? Only something just a tiny bit wrong in the make of your brain. Why
shouldn’t there be a mad ship—I mean mad in a ship-like way, so that under no
circumstances could you be sure she would do what any other sensible ship would
naturally do for you. There are ships that steer wildly, and ships that can’t
be quite trusted always to stay; others want careful watching when running in a
gale; and, again, there may be a ship that will make heavy weather of it in
every little blow. But then you expect her to be always so. You take it as part
of her character, as a ship, just as you take account of a man’s peculiarities
of temper when you deal with him. But with her you couldn’t. She was
unaccountable. If she wasn’t mad, then she was the most evil-minded, underhand,
savage brute that ever went afloat. I’ve seen her run in a heavy gale
beautifully for two days, and on the third broach to twice in the same
afternoon. The first time she flung the helmsman clean over the wheel, but as
she didn’t quite manage to kill him she had another try about three hours
afterwards. She swamped herself fore and aft, burst all the canvas we had set,
scared all hands into a panic, and even frightened Mrs. Colchester down there
in these beautiful stern cabins that she was so proud of. When we mustered the
crew there was one man missing. Swept overboard, of course, without being
either seen or heard, poor devil! and I only wonder more of us didn’t go.
“Always something like
that. Always. I heard an old mate tell Captain Colchester once that it had come
to this with him, that he was afraid to open his mouth to give any sort of
order. She was as much of a terror in harbour as at sea. You could never be
certain what would hold her. On the slightest provocation she would start
snapping ropes, cables, wire hawsers, like carrots. She was heavy, clumsy,
unhandy—but that does not quite explain that power for mischief she had. You
know, somehow, when I think of her I can’t help remembering what we hear of
incurable lunatics breaking loose now and then.”
He looked at me
inquisitively. But, of course, I couldn’t admit that a ship could be mad.
“In the ports where she
was known,” he went on,’ “they dreaded the sight of her. She thought nothing of
knocking away twenty feet or so of solid stone facing off a quay or wiping off
the end of a wooden wharf. She must have lost miles of chain and hundreds of
tons of anchors in her time. When she fell aboard some poor unoffending ship it
was the very devil of a job to haul her off again. And she never got hurt
herself—just a few scratches or so, perhaps. They had wanted to have her
strong. And so she was. Strong enough to ram Polar ice with. And as she began
so she went on. From the day she was launched she never let a year pass without
murdering somebody. I think the owners got very worried about it. But they were
a stiff-necked generation all these Apses; they wouldn’t admit there could be
anything wrong with the Apse Family. They wouldn’t even change her name. ‘Stuff
and nonsense,’ as Mrs. Colchester used to say. They ought at least to have shut
her up for life in some dry dock or other, away up the river, and never let her
smell salt water again. I assure you, my dear sir, that she invariably did kill
someone every voyage she made. It was perfectly well-known. She got a name for
it, far and wide.”
I expressed my surprise
that a ship with such a deadly reputation could ever get a crew.
“Then, you don’t know
what sailors are, my dear sir. Let me just show you by an instance. One day in
dock at home, while loafing on the forecastle head, I noticed two respectable
salts come along, one a middle-aged, competent, steady man, evidently, the
other a smart, youngish chap. They read the name on the bows and stopped to
look at her. Says the elder man: ‘Apse Family. That’s the sanguinary female
dog’ (I’m putting it in that way) ‘of a ship, Jack, that kills a man every voyage.
I wouldn’t sign in her—not for Joe, I wouldn’t.’ And the other says: ‘If she
were mine, I’d have her towed on the mud and set on fire, blame if I wouldn’t.’
Then the first man chimes in: ‘Much do they care! Men are cheap, God knows.’
The younger one spat in the water alongside. ‘They won’t have me—not for double
wages.’
“They hung about for
some time and then walked up the dock. Half an hour later I saw them both on
our deck looking about for the mate, and apparently very anxious to be taken
on. And they were.”
“How do you account for
this?” I asked.
“What would you say?”
he retorted. “Recklessness! The vanity of boasting in the evening to all their
chums: ‘We’ve just shipped in that there Apse Family. Blow her. She ain’t going
to scare us.’ Sheer sailorlike perversity! A sort of curiosity. Well—a little
of all that, no doubt. I put the question to them in the course of the voyage.
The answer of the elderly chap was:
“‘A man can die but
once.’ The younger assured me in a mocking tone that he wanted to see ‘how she
would do it this time.’ But I tell you what; there was a sort of fascination
about the brute.”
Jermyn, who seemed to
have seen every ship in the world, broke in sulkily:
“I saw her once out of
this very window towing up the river; a great black ugly thing, going along
like a big hearse.”
“Something sinister
about her looks, wasn’t there?” said the man in tweeds, looking down at old
Jermyn with a friendly eye. “I always had a sort of horror of her. She gave me
a beastly shock when I was no more than fourteen, the very first day—nay,
hour—I joined her. Father came up to see me off, and was to go down to
Gravesend with us. I was his second boy to go to sea. My big brother was
already an officer then. We. got on board about eleven in the morning, and
found the ship ready to drop out of the basin, stern first. She had not moved
three times her own length when, at a little pluck the tug gave her to enter
the dock gates, she made one of her rampaging starts, and put such a weight on
the check rope—a new six-inch hawser—that forward there they had no chance to
ease it round in time, and it parted. I saw the broken end fly up high in the
air, and the next moment that brute brought her quarter against the pier-head
with a jar that staggered everybody about her decks. She didn’t hurt herself.
Not she! But one of the boys the mate had sent aloft on the mizzen to do
something, came down on the poop-deck—thump—right in front of me. He was not
much older than myself. We had been grinning at each other only a few minutes
before. He must have been handling himself carelessly, not expecting to get
such a jerk. I heard his startled cry—Oh!—in a high treble as he felt himself
going, and looked up in time to see him go limp all over as he fell. Ough! Poor
father was remarkably white about the gills when we shook hands in Gravesend.
‘Are you all right?’ he says, looking hard at me. ‘Yes, father.’ ‘Quite sure?’
‘Yes, father.’ ‘Well, then good-bye, my boy.’ He told me afterwards that for
half a word he would have carried me off home with him there and then. I am the
baby of the family—you know,” added the man in tweeds, stroking his moustache
with an ingenuous smile.
I acknowledged this
interesting communication by a sympathetic murmur. He waved his hand
carelessly.
“This might have
utterly spoiled a chap’s nerve for going aloft, you know—utterly. He fell
within two feet of me, cracking his head on a mooring-bitt. Never moved. Stone
dead. Nice looking little fellow, he was. I had just been thinking we would be
great chums. However, that wasn’t yet the worst that brute of a ship could do.
I served in her three years of my time, and then I got transferred to the Lucy
Apse, for a year. The sailmaker we had in the Apse Family turned up there, too,
and I remember him saying to me one evening, after we had been a week at sea:
Isn’t she a meek little ship?’ No wonder we thought the Lucy Apse a dear, meek,
little ship after getting clear of that big, rampaging savage brute. It was
like heaven. Her officers seemed to me the restfullest lot of men on earth. To
me who had known no ship but the Apse Family, the Lucy was like a sort of magic
craft that did what you wanted her to do of her own accord. One evening we got
caught aback pretty sharply from right ahead. In about ten minutes we had her
full again, sheets aft, tacks down, decks cleared, and the officer of the watch
leaning against the weather rail peacefully. It seemed simply marvellous to me.
The other would have stuck for half-an-hour in irons, rolling her decks full of
water, knocking the men about—spars cracking, braces snapping, yards taking
charge, and a confounded scare going on aft because of her beastly rudder,
which she had a way of flapping about fit to raise your hair on end. I couldn’t
get over my wonder for days.
“Well, I finished my
last year of apprenticeship in that jolly little ship—she wasn’t so little
either, but after that other heavy devil she seemed but a plaything to handle.
I finished my time and passed; and then just as I was thinking of having three
weeks of real good time on shore I got at breakfast a letter asking me the
earliest day I could be ready to join the Apse Family as third mate. I gave my
plate a shove that shot it into the middle of the table; dad looked up over his
paper; mother raised her hands in astonishment, and I went out bare-headed into
our bit of garden, where I walked round and round for an hour.
“When I came in again
mother was out of the dining-room, and dad had shifted berth into his big
armchair. The letter was lying on the mantelpiece.
“‘It’s very creditable
to you to get the offer, and very kind of them to make it,’ he said. ‘And I see
also that Charles has been appointed chief mate of that ship for one voyage.’
“There was, over leaf,
a P.S. to that effect in Mr. Apse’s own handwriting, which I had overlooked.
Charley was my big brother.
“I don’t like very much
to have two of my boys together in one ship,’ father goes on, in his
deliberate, solemn way. ‘And I may tell you that I would not mind writing Mr.
Apse a letter to that effect.’
“Dear old dad! He was a
wonderful father. What would you have done? The mere notion of going back (and
as an officer, too), to be worried and bothered, and kept on the jump night and
day by that brute, made me feel sick. But she wasn’t a ship you could afford to
fight shy of. Besides, the most genuine excuse could not be given without
mortally offending Apse & Sons. The firm, and I believe the whole family
down to the old unmarried aunts in Lancashire, had grown desperately touchy
about that accursed ship’s character. This was the case for answering ‘Ready
now’ from your very death-bed if you wished to die in their good graces. And
that’s precisely what I did answer—by wire, to have it over and done with at
once.
“The prospect of being
shipmates with my big brother cheered me up considerably, though it made me a
bit anxious, too. Ever since I remember myself as a little chap he had been
very good to me, and I looked upon him as the finest fellow in the world. And
so he was. No better officer ever walked the deck of a merchant ship. And
that’s a fact. He was a fine, strong, upstanding, sun-tanned, young fellow,
with his brown hair curling a little, and an eye like a hawk. He was just
splendid. We hadn’t seen each other for many years, and even this time, though
he had been in England three weeks already, he hadn’t showed up at home yet,
but had spent his spare time in Surrey somewhere making up to Maggie
Colchester, old Captain Colchester’s niece. Her father, a great friend of
dad’s, was in the sugar-broking business, and Charley made a sort of second
home of their house. I wondered what my big brother would think of me. There
was a sort of sternness about Charley’s face which never left it, not even when
he was larking in his rather wild fashion.
“He received me with a
great shout of laughter. He seemed to think my joining as an officer the
greatest joke in the world. There was a difference of ten years between us, and
I suppose he remembered me best in pinafores. I was a kid of four when he first
went to sea. It surprised me to find how boisterous he could be.
“‘Now we shall see what
you are made of,’ he cried. And he held me off by the shoulders, and punched my
ribs, and hustled me into his berth. ‘Sit down, Ned. I am glad of the chance of
having you with me. I’ll put the finishing touch to you, my young officer,
providing you’re worth the trouble. And, first of all, get it well into your
head that we are not going to let this brute kill anybody this voyage. We’ll
stop her racket.’
“I perceived he was in
dead earnest about it. He talked grimly of the ship, and how we must be careful
and never allow this ugly beast to catch us napping with any of her damned
tricks.
“He gave me a regular
lecture on special seamanship for the use of the Apse Family; then changing his
tone, he began to talk at large, rattling off the wildest, funniest nonsense,
till my sides ached with laughing. I could see very well he was a bit above
himself with high spirits. It couldn’t be because of my coming. Not to that
extent. But, of course, I wouldn’t have dreamt of asking what was the matter. I
had a proper respect for my big brother, I can tell you. But it was all made
plain enough a day or two afterwards, when I heard that Miss Maggie Colchester
was coming for the voyage. Uncle was giving her a sea-trip for the benefit of
her health.
“I don’t know what
could have been wrong with her health. She had a beautiful colour, and a deuce
of a lot of fair hair. She didn’t care a rap for wind, or rain, or spray, or
sun, or green seas, or anything. She was a blue-eyed, jolly girl of the very
best sort, but the way she cheeked my big brother used to frighten me. I always
expected it to end in an awful row. However, nothing decisive happened till
after we had been in Sydney for a week. One day, in the men’s dinner hour,
Charley sticks his head into my cabin. I was stretched out on my back on the
settee, smoking in peace.
“‘Come ashore with me,
Ned,’ he says, in his curt way.
“I jumped up, of
course, and away after him down the gangway and up George Street. He strode
along like a giant, and I at his elbow, panting. It was confoundedly hot.
‘Where on earth are you rushing me to, Charley?’ I made bold to ask.
“‘Here,’ he says.
“‘Here’ was a
jeweller’s shop. I couldn’t imagine what he could want there. It seemed a sort
of mad freak. He thrusts under my nose three rings, which looked very tiny on
his big, brown palm, growling out—
“‘For Maggie! Which?’
“I got a kind of scare
at this. I couldn’t make a sound, but I pointed at the one that sparkled white
and blue. He put it in his waistcoat pocket, paid for it with a lot of
sovereigns, and bolted out. When we got on board I was quite out of breath.
‘Shake hands, old chap,’ I gasped out. He gave me a thump on the back. ‘Give
what orders you like to the boatswain when the hands turn-to,’ says he; ‘I am
off duty this afternoon.’
“Then he vanished from
the deck for a while, but presently he came out of the cabin with Maggie, and
these two went over the gangway publicly, before all hands, going for a walk
together on that awful, blazing hot day, with clouds of dust flying about. They
came back after a few hours looking very staid, but didn’t seem to have the slightest
idea where they had been. Anyway, that’s the answer they both made to Mrs.
Colchester’s question at tea-time.
“And didn’t she turn on
Charley, with her voice like an old night cabman’s! ‘Rubbish. Don’t know where
you’ve been! Stuff and nonsense. You’ve walked the girl off her legs. Don’t do
it again.’
“It’s surprising how
meek Charley could be with that old woman. Only on one occasion he whispered to
me, ‘I’m jolly glad she isn’t Maggie’s aunt, except by marriage. That’s no sort
of relationship.’ But I think he let Maggie have too much of her own way. She
was hopping all over that ship in her yachting skirt and a red tam o’ shanter
like a bright bird on a dead black tree. The old salts used to grin to
themselves when they saw her coming along, and offered to teach her knots or
splices. I believe she liked the men, for Charley’s sake, I suppose.
“As you may imagine,
the fiendish propensities of that cursed ship were never spoken of on board.
Not in the cabin, at any rate. Only once on the homeward passage Charley said,
incautiously, something about bringing all her crew home this time. Captain
Colchester began to look uncomfortable at once, and that silly, hard-bitten old
woman flew out at Charley as though he had said something indecent. I was quite
confounded myself; as to Maggie, she sat completely mystified, opening her blue
eyes very wide. Of course, before she was a day older she wormed it all out of
me. She was a very difficult person to lie to.
“‘How awful,’ she said,
quite solemn. ‘So many poor fellows. I am glad the voyage is nearly over. I
won’t have a moment’s peace about Charley now.’
“I assured her Charley
was all right. It took more than that ship knew to get over a seaman like
Charley. And she agreed with me.
“Next day we got the
tug off Dungeness; and when the tow-rope was fast Charley rubbed his hands and
said to me in an undertone—
“‘We’ve baffled her,
Ned.’
“‘Looks like it,’ I
said, with a grin at him. It was beautiful weather, and the sea as smooth as a
millpond. We went up the river without a shadow of trouble except once, when
off Hole Haven, the brute took a sudden sheer and nearly had a barge anchored
just clear of the fairway. But I was aft, looking after the steering, and she
did not catch me napping that time. Charley came up on the poop, looking very
concerned. ‘Close shave,’ says he.
“‘Never mind, Charley,’
I answered, cheerily. ‘You’ve tamed her.’
“We were to tow right
up to the dock. The river pilot boarded us below Gravesend, and the first words
I heard him say were: ‘You may just as well take your port anchor inboard at
once, Mr. Mate.’
“This had been done
when I went forward. I saw Maggie on the forecastle head enjoying the bustle
and I begged her to go aft, but she took no notice of me, of course. Then
Charley, who was very busy with the head gear, caught sight of her and shouted
in his biggest voice: ‘Get off the forecastle head, Maggie. You’re in the way
here.’ For all answer she made a funny face at him, and I saw poor Charley turn
away, hiding a smile. She was flushed with the excitement of getting home
again, and her blue eyes seemed to snap electric sparks as she looked at the
river. A collier brig had gone round just ahead of us, and our tug had to stop
her engines in a hurry to avoid running into her.
“In a moment, as is
usually the case, all the shipping in the reach seemed to get into a hopeless
tangle. A schooner and a ketch got up a small collision all to themselves right
in the middle of the river. It was exciting to watch, and, meantime, our tug
remained stopped. Any other ship than that brute could have been coaxed to keep
straight for a couple of minutes—but not she! Her head fell off at once, and
she began to drift down, taking her tug along with her. I noticed a cluster of
coasters at anchor within a quarter of a mile of us, and I thought I had better
speak to the pilot. ‘If you let her get amongst that lot,’ I said, quietly,
‘she will grind some of them to bits before we get her out again.’
“‘Don’t I know her!’
cries he, stamping his foot in a perfect fury. And he out with his whistle to
make that bothered tug get the ship’s head up again as quick as possible. He
blew like mad, waving his arm to port, and presently we could see that the
tug’s engines had been set going ahead. Her paddles churned the water, but it
was as if she had been trying to tow a rock—she couldn’t get an inch out of
that ship. Again the pilot blew his whistle, and waved his arm to port. We
could see the tug’s paddles turning faster and faster away, broad on our bow.
“For a moment tug and
ship hung motionless in a crowd of moving shipping, and then the terrific
strain that evil, stony-hearted brute would always put on everything, tore the
towing-chock clean out. The tow-rope surged over, snapping the iron stanchions
of the head-rail one after another as if they had been sticks of sealing-wax.
It was only then I noticed that in order to have a better view over our heads,
Maggie had stepped upon the port anchor as it lay flat on the forecastle deck.
“It had been lowered
properly into its hardwood beds, but there had been no time to take a turn with
it. Anyway, it was quite secure as it was, for going into dock; but I could see
directly that the tow-rope would sweep under the fluke in another second. My
heart flew up right into my throat, but not before I had time to yell out:
‘Jump clear of that anchor!’
“But I hadn’t time to
shriek out her name. I don’t suppose she heard me at all. The first touch of
the hawser against the fluke threw her down; she was up on her feet again quick
as lightning, but she was up on the wrong side. I heard a horrid, scraping
sound, and then that anchor, tipping over, rose up like something alive; its
great, rough iron arm caught Maggie round the waist, seemed to clasp her close
with a dreadful hug, and flung itself with her over and down in a terrific
clang of iron, followed by heavy ringing blows that shook the ship from stem to
stern—because the ring stopper held!”
“How horrible!” I
exclaimed.
“I used to dream for
years afterwards of anchors catching hold of girls,” said the man in tweeds, a
little wildly. He shuddered. “With a most pitiful howl Charley was over after
her almost on the instant. But, Lord! he didn’t see as much as a gleam of her
red tam o’ shanter in the water. Nothing! nothing whatever! In a moment there were
half-a-dozen boats around us, and he got pulled into one. I, with the boatswain
and the carpenter, let go the other anchor in a hurry and brought the ship up
somehow. The pilot had gone silly. He walked up and down the forecastle head
wringing his hands and muttering to himself: ‘Killing women, now! Killing
women, now!’ Not another word could you get out of him.
“Dusk fell, then a
night black as pitch; and peering upon the river I heard a low, mournful hail,
‘Ship, ahoy!’ Two Gravesend watermen came alongside. They had a lantern in
their wherry, and looked up the ship’s side, holding on to the ladder without a
word. I saw in the patch of light a lot of loose, fair hair down there.”
He shuddered again.
“After the tide turned
poor Maggie’s body had floated clear of one of them big mooring buoys,” he
explained. “I crept aft, feeling half-dead, and managed to send a rocket up—to
let the other searchers know, on the river. And then I slunk away forward like
a cur, and spent the night sitting on the heel of the bowsprit so as to be as
far as possible out of Charley’s way.”
“Poor fellow!” I
murmured.
“Yes. Poor fellow,” he
repeated, musingly. “That brute wouldn’t let him—not even him—cheat her of her
prey. But he made her fast in dock next morning. He did. We hadn’t exchanged a
word—not a single look for that matter. I didn’t want to look at him. When the
last rope was fast he put his hands to his head and stood gazing down at his
feet as if trying to remember something. The men waited on the main deck for
the words that end the voyage. Perhaps that is what he was trying to remember.
I spoke for him. ‘That’ll do, men.’
“I never saw a crew
leave a ship so quietly. They sneaked over the rail one after another, taking
care not to bang their sea chests too heavily. They looked our way, but not one
had the stomach to come up and offer to shake hands with the mate as is usual.
“I followed him all
over the empty ship to and fro, here and there, with no living soul about but
the two of us, because the old ship-keeper had locked himself up in the
galley—both doors. Suddenly poor Charley mutters, in a crazy voice: ‘I’m done
here,’ and strides down the gangway with me at his heels, up the dock, out at
the gate, on towards Tower Hill. He used to take rooms with a decent old landlady
in America Square, to be near his work.
“All at once he stops
short, turns round, and comes back straight at me. ‘Ned,’ says he, I am going
home.’ I had the good luck to sight a four-wheeler and got him in just in time.
His legs were beginning to give way. In our hall he fell down on a chair, and
I’ll never forget father’s and mother’s amazed, perfectly still faces as they
stood over him. They couldn’t understand what had happened to him till I
blubbered out, ‘Maggie got drowned, yesterday, in the river.’
“Mother let out a
little cry. Father looks from him to me, and from me to him, as if comparing
our faces—for, upon my soul, Charley did not resemble himself at all. Nobody
moved; and the poor fellow raises his big brown hands slowly to his throat, and
with one single tug rips everything open—collar, shirt, waistcoat—a perfect
wreck and ruin of a man. Father and I got him upstairs somehow, and mother
pretty nearly killed herself nursing him through a brain fever.”
The man in tweeds
nodded at me significantly.
“Ah! there was nothing
that could be done with that brute. She had a devil in her.”
“Where’s your brother?”
I asked, expecting to hear he was dead. But he was commanding a smart steamer
on the China coast, and never came home now.
Jermyn fetched a heavy
sigh, and the handkerchief being now sufficiently dry, put it up tenderly to
his red and lamentable nose.
“She was a ravening
beast,” the man in tweeds started again. “Old Colchester put his foot down and
resigned. And would you believe it? Apse & Sons wrote to ask whether he
wouldn’t reconsider his decision! Anything to save the good name of the Apse
Family.’ Old Colchester went to the office then and said that he would take
charge again but only to sail her out into the North Sea and scuttle her there.
He was nearly off his chump. He used to be darkish iron-grey, but his hair went
snow-white in a fortnight. And Mr. Lucian Apse (they had known each other as
young men) pretended not to notice it. Eh? Here’s infatuation if you like!
Here’s pride for you!
“They jumped at the
first man they could get to take her, for fear of the scandal of the Apse
Family not being able to find a skipper. He was a festive soul, I believe, but
he stuck to her grim and hard. Wilmot was his second mate. A harum-scarum
fellow, and pretending to a great scorn for all the girls. The fact is he was
really timid. But let only one of them do as much as lift her little finger in
encouragement, and there was nothing that could hold the beggar. As apprentice,
once, he deserted abroad after a petticoat, and would have gone to the dogs
then, if his skipper hadn’t taken the trouble to find him and lug him by the
ears out of some house of perdition or other.
“It was said that one
of the firm had been heard once to express a hope that this brute of a ship
would get lost soon. I can hardly credit the tale, unless it might have been
Mr. Alfred Apse, whom the family didn’t think much of. They had him in the
office, but he was considered a bad egg altogether, always flying off to race
meetings and coming home drunk. You would have thought that a ship so full of
deadly tricks would run herself ashore some day out of sheer cussedness. But
not she! She was going to last for ever. She had a nose to keep off the bottom.”
Jermyn made a grunt of
approval.
“A ship after a pilot’s
own heart, eh?” jeered the man in tweeds. “Well, Wilmot managed it. He was the
man for it, but even he, perhaps, couldn’t have done the trick without the
green-eyed governess, or nurse, or whatever she was to the children of Mr. and
Mrs. Pamphilius.
“Those people were
passengers in her from Port Adelaide to the Cape. Well, the ship went out and
anchored outside for the day. The skipper—hospitable soul—had a lot of guests
from town to a farewell lunch—as usual with him. It was five in the evening
before the last shore boat left the side, and the weather looked ugly and dark
in the gulf. There was no reason for him to get under way. However, as he had
told everybody he was going that day, he imagined it was proper to do so
anyhow. But as he had no mind after all these festivities to tackle the straits
in the dark, with a scant wind, he gave orders to keep the ship under lower
topsails and foresail as close as she would lie, dodging along the land till
the morning. Then he sought his virtuous couch. The mate was on deck, having
his face washed very clean with hard rain squalls. Wilmot relieved him at
midnight.
“The Apse Family had,
as you observed, a house on her poop . . .”
“A big, ugly white
thing, sticking up,” Jermyn murmured, sadly, at the fire.
“That’s it: a companion
for the cabin stairs and a sort of chart-room combined. The rain drove in gusts
on the sleepy Wilmot. The ship was then surging slowly to the southward, close
hauled, with the coast within three miles or so to windward. There was nothing
to look out for in that part of the gulf, and Wilmot went round to dodge the
squalls under the lee of that chart-room, whose door on that side was open. The
night was black, like a barrel of coal-tar. And then he heard a woman’s voice
whispering to him.
“That confounded
green-eyed girl of the Pamphilius people had put the kids to bed a long time
ago, of course, but it seems couldn’t get to sleep herself. She heard eight
bells struck, and the chief mate come below to turn in. She waited a bit, then
got into her dressing-gown and stole across the empty saloon and up the stairs
into the chart-room. She sat down on the settee near the open door to cool
herself, I daresay.
“I suppose when she
whispered to Wilmot it was as if somebody had struck a match in the fellow’s
brain. I don’t know how it was they had got so very thick. I fancy he had met
her ashore a few times before. I couldn’t make it out, because, when telling
the story, Wilmot would break off to swear something awful at every second
word. We had met on the quay in Sydney, and he had an apron of sacking up to
his chin, a big whip in his hand. A wagon-driver. Glad to do anything not to
starve. That’s what he had come down to.
“However, there he was,
with his head inside the door, on the girl’s shoulder as likely as not—officer
of the watch! The helmsman, on giving his evidence afterwards, said that he
shouted several times that the binnacle lamp had gone out. It didn’t matter to
him, because his orders were to ‘sail her close.’ ‘I thought it funny,’ he
said, ‘that the ship should keep on falling off in squalls, but I luffed her up
every time as close as I was able. It was so dark I couldn’t see my hand before
my face, and the rain came in bucketfuls on my head.’
“The truth was that at
every squall the wind hauled aft a little, till gradually the ship came to be
heading straight for the coast, without a single soul in her being aware of it.
Wilmot himself confessed that he had not been near the standard compass for an
hour. He might well have confessed! The first thing he knew was the man on the
look-out shouting blue murder forward there.
“He tore his neck free,
he says, and yelled back at him: ‘What do you say?’
“‘I think I hear
breakers ahead, sir,’ howled the man, and came rushing aft with the rest of the
watch, in the ‘awfullest blinding deluge that ever fell from the sky,’ Wilmot
says. For a second or so he was so scared and bewildered that he could not
remember on which side of the gulf the ship was. He wasn’t a good officer, but
he was a seaman all the same. He pulled himself together in a second, and the
right orders sprang to his lips without thinking. They were to hard up with the
helm and shiver the main and mizzen-topsails.
“It seems that the sails
actually fluttered. He couldn’t see them, but he heard them rattling and
banging above his head. ‘No use! She was too slow in going off,’ he went on,
his dirty face twitching, and the damn’d carter’s whip shaking in his hand.
‘She seemed to stick fast.’ And then the flutter of the canvas above his head
ceased. At this critical moment the wind hauled aft again with a gust, filling
the sails and sending the ship with a great way upon the rocks on her lee bow.
She had overreached herself in her last little game. Her time had come—the
hour, the man, the black night, the treacherous gust of wind—the right woman to
put an end to her. The brute deserved nothing better. Strange are the
instruments of Providence. There’s a sort of poetical justice—”
The man in tweeds
looked hard at me.
“The first ledge she
went over stripped the false keel off her. Rip! The skipper, rushing out of his
berth, found a crazy woman, in a red flannel dressing-gown, flying round and
round the cuddy, screeching like a cockatoo.
“The next bump knocked
her clean under the cabin table. It also started the stern-post and carried
away the rudder, and then that brute ran up a shelving, rocky shore, tearing
her bottom out, till she stopped short, and the foremast dropped over the bows
like a gangway.”
“Anybody lost?” I
asked.
“No one, unless that
fellow, Wilmot,” answered the gentleman, unknown to Miss Blank, looking round
for his cap. “And his case was worse than drowning for a man. Everybody got
ashore all right. Gale didn’t come on till next day, dead from the West, and
broke up that brute in a surprisingly short time. It was as though she had been
rotten at heart.” . . . He changed his tone, “Rain left off? I must get my bike
and rush home to dinner. I live in Herne Bay—came out for a spin this morning.”
He nodded at me in a
friendly way, and went out with a swagger.
“Do you know who he is,
Jermyn?” I asked.
The North Sea pilot
shook his head, dismally. “Fancy losing a ship in that silly fashion! Oh, dear!
oh dear!” he groaned in lugubrious tones, spreading his damp handkerchief again
like a curtain before the glowing grate.
On going out I
exchanged a glance and a smile (strictly proper) with the respectable Miss
Blank, barmaid of the Three Crows.
No comments:
Post a Comment