|
3
There may be tides in the affairs of men which taken at the flood . . . and so on. Personally I am still on the look out for that important turn. I am, however, afraid that most of us are fated to flounder for ever in the dead water of a pool whose shores are arid indeed. But I know that there are often in men`s affairs unexpectedly--even irration- ally--illuminating moments when an otherwise in- significant sound, perhaps only some perfectly com- monplace gesture, suffices to reveal to us all the unreason, all the fatuous unreason, of our compla- cency. "Go ahead" are not particularly striking words even when pronounced with a foreign accent; yet they petrified me in the very act of smiling at myself in the glass. And then, refusing to believe my ears, but already boiling with indignation, I ran out of the cabin and up on deck. It was incredibly true. It was perfectly true. I had no eyes for anything but the Diana. It was she, then, was being taken away. She was already out of her berth and shooting athwart the river. "The way this loonatic plucked that ship out is a cau- tion," said the awed voice of my mate close to my ear. "Hey! Hallo! Falk! Hermann! What`s this infernal trick?" I yelled in a fury. Nobody heard me. Falk certainly could not hear me. His tug was turning at full speed away under the other bank. The wire hawser between her and the Diana, stretched as taut as a harpstring, vibrated alarmingly. The high black craft careened over to the awful strain. A loud crack came out of her, followed by the tearing and splintering of wood. "There!" said the awed voice in my ear. "He`s carried away their towing chock." And then, with enthusiasm, "Oh! Look! Look! sir, Look! at them Dutchmen skipping out of the way on the forecastle. I hope to goodness he`ll break a few of their shins before he`s done with `em." I yelled my vain protests. The rays of the rising sun coursing level along the plain warmed my back, but I was hot enough with rage. I could not have believed that a simple towing operation could sug- gest so plainly the idea of abduction, of rape. Falk was simply running off with the Diana. The white tug careered out into the middle of the river. The red floats of her paddle-wheels revolv- ing with mad rapidity tore up the whole reach into foam. The Diana in mid-stream waltzed round with as much grace as an old barn, and flew after her ravisher. Through the ragged fog of smoke driving headlong upon the water I had a glimpse of Falk`s square motionless shoulders under a white hat as big as a cart-wheel, of his red face, his yel- low staring eyes, his great beard. Instead of keep- ing a lookout ahead, he was deliberately turning his back on the river to glare at his tow. The tall heavy craft, never so used before in her life, seemed to have lost her senses; she took a wild sheer against her helm, and for a moment came straight at us, menacing and clumsy, like a runaway mountain. She piled up a streaming, hissing, boiling wave half-way up her blunt stem, my crew let out one great howl,--and then we held our breaths. It was a near thing. But Falk had her! He had her in his clutch. I fancied I could hear the steel hawser ping as it surged across the Diana`s forecastle, with the hands on board of her bolting away from it in all directions. It was a near thing. Hermann, with his hair rumpled, in a snuffy flannel shirt and a pair of mustard-coloured trousers, had rushed to help with the wheel. I saw his terrified round face; I saw his very teeth uncovered by a sort of ghastly fixed grin; and in a great leaping tumult of water between the two ships the Diana whisked past so close that I could have flung a hair-brush at his head, for, it seems, I had kept them in my hands all the time. Meanwhile Mrs. Hermann sat placidly on the skylight, with a woollen shawl on her shoul- ders. The excellent woman in response to my in- dignant gesticulations fluttered a handkerchief, nodding and smiling in the kindest way imagina- ble. The boys, only half-dressed, were jumping about the poop in great glee, displaying their gaudy braces; and Lena in a short scarlet petticoat, with peaked elbows and thin bare arms, nursed the rag-doll with devotion. The whole family passed before my sight as if dragged across a scene of un- paralleled violence. The last I saw was Hermann`s niece with the baby Hermann in her arms standing apart from the others. Magnificent in her close- fitting print frock she displayed something so com- manding in the manifest perfection of her figure that the sun seemed to be rising for her alone. The flood of light brought out the opulence of her form and the vigour of her youth in a glorifying way. She went by perfectly motionless and as if lost in meditation; only the hem of her skirt stirred in the draught; the sun rays broke on her sleek tawny hair; that bald-headed ruffian, Nicholas, was whack- ing her on the shoulder. I saw his tiny fat arm rise and fall in a workmanlike manner. And then the four cottage windows of the Diana came into view retreating swiftly down the river. The sashes were up, and one of the white calico curtains was fluttered straight out like a streamer above the agi- tated water of the wake. To be thus tricked out of one`s turn was an un- heard of occurrence. In my agent`s office, where I went to complain at once, they protested with apol- ogies they couldn`t understand how the mistake arose: but Schomberg when I dropped in later to get some tiffin, though surprised to see me, was perfect- ly ready with an explanation. I found him seated at the end of a long narrow table, facing his wife--a scraggy little woman, with long ringlets and a blue tooth, who smiled abroad stupidly and looked frightened when you spoke to her. Between them a waggling punkah fanned twenty cane-bottomed chairs and two rows of shiny plates. Three China- men in white jackets loafed with napkins in their hands around that desolation. Schomberg`s pet table d`hote was not much of a success that day. He was feeding himself ferociously and seemed to overflow with bitterness. He began by ordering in a brutal voice the chops to be brought back for me, and turning in his chair: "Mistake they told you? Not a bit of it! Don`t you believe it for a moment, captain! Falk isn`t a man to make mistakes unless on purpose." His firm conviction was that Falk had been trying all along to curry favour on the cheap with Hermann. "On the cheap--mind you! It doesn`t cost him a cent to put that insult upon you, and Captain Her- mann gets in a day ahead of your ship. Time`s money! Eh? You are very friendly with Captain Hermann I believe, but a man is bound to be pleased at any little advantage he may get. Captain Her- mann is a good business man, and there`s no such thing as a friend in business. Is there?" He leaned forward and began to cast stealthy glances as usual. "But Falk is, and always was, a misera- ble fellow. I would despise him." I muttered, grumpily, that I had no particular respect for Falk. "I would despise him," he insisted, with an ap- pearance of anxiety which would have amused me if I had not been fathoms deep in discontent. To a young man fairly conscientious and as well-mean- ing as only the young man can be, the current ill- usage of life comes with a peculiar cruelty. Youth that is fresh enough to believe in guilt, in innocence, and in itself, will always doubt whether it have not perchance deserved its fate. Sombre of mind and without appetite, I struggled with the chop while Mrs. Schomberg sat with her everlasting stupid grin and Schomberg`s talk gathered way like a slide of rubbish. "Let me tell you. It`s all about that girl. I don`t know what Captain Hermann expects, but if he asked me I could tell him something about Falk. He`s a miserable fellow. That man is a perfect slave. That`s what I call him. A slave. Last year I started this table d`hote, and sent cards out --you know. You think he had one meal in the house? Give the thing a trial? Not once. He has got hold now of a Madras cook--a blamed fraud that I hunted out of my cookhouse with a rattan. He was not fit to cook for white men. No, not for the white men`s dogs either; but, see, any damned native that can boil a pot of rice is good enough for Mr. Falk. Rice and a little fish he buys for a few cents from the fishing boats outside is what he lives on. You would hardly credit it--eh? A white man, too. . . ." He wiped his lips, using the napkin with indig- nation, and looking at me. It flashed through my mind in the midst of my depression that if all the meat in the town was like these table d`hote chops, Falk wasn`t so far wrong. I was on the point of saying this, but Schomberg`s stare was intimidat- ing. "He`s a vegetarian, perhaps," I murmured instead. "He`s a miser. A miserable miser," affirmed the hotel-keeper with great force. "The meat here is not so good as at home--of course. And dear too. But look at me. I only charge a dollar for the tif- fin, and one dollar and fifty cents for the dinner. Show me anything cheaper. Why am I doing it? There`s little profit in this game. Falk wouldn`t look at it. I do it for the sake of a lot of young white fellows here that hadn`t a place where they could get a decent meal and eat it decently in good company. There`s first-rate company always at my table." The convinced way he surveyed the empty chairs made me feel as if I had intruded upon a tiffin of ghostly Presences. "A white man should eat like a white man, dash it all," he burst out impetuously. "Ought to eat meat, must eat meat. I manage to get meat for my patrons all the year round. Don`t I? I am not ca- tering for a dam` lot of coolies: Have another chop captain. . . . No? You, boy--take away!" He threw himself back and waited grimly for the curry. The half-closed jalousies darkened the room pervaded by the smell of fresh whitewash: a swarm of flies buzzed and settled in turns, and poor Mrs. Schomberg`s smile seemed to express the quintes- sence of all the imbecility that had ever spoken, had ever breathed, had ever been fed on infamous buffalo meat within these bare walls. Schomberg did not open his lips till he was ready to thrust therein a spoonful of greasy rice. He rolled his eyes ridicu- lously before he swallowed the hot stuff, and only then broke out afresh. "It is the most degrading thing. They take the dish up to the wheelhouse for him with a cover on it, and he shuts both the doors before he begins to eat. Fact! Must be ashamed of himself. Ask the engi- neer. He can`t do without an engineer--don`t you see--and as no respectable man can be expected to put up with such a table, he allows them fifteen dol- lars a month extra mess money. I assure you it is so! You just ask Mr. Ferdinand da Costa. That`s the engineer he has now. You may have seen him about my place, a delicate dark young man, with very fine eyes and a little moustache. He arrived here a year ago from Calcutta. Between you and me, I guess the money-lenders there must have been after him. He rushes here for a meal every chance he can get, for just please tell me what satisfaction is that for a well-educated young fellow to feed all alone in his cabin--like a wild beast? That`s what Falk expects his engineers to put up with for fifteen dollars extra. And the rows on board every time a little smell of cooking gets about the deck! You wouldn`t believe! The other day da Costa got the cook to fry a steak for him--a turtle steak it was too, not beef at all--and the fat caught or some- thing. Young da Costa himself was telling me of it here in this room. `Mr. Schomberg`--says he-- `if I had let a cylinder cover blow off through the skylight by my negligence Captain Falk couldn`t have been more savage. He frightened the cook so that he won`t put anything on the fire for me now.` Poor da Costa had tears in his eyes. Only try to put yourself in his place, captain: a sensitive, gen- tlemanly young fellow. Is he expected to eat his food raw? But that`s your Falk all over. Ask any one you like. I suppose the fifteen dollars extra he has to give keep on rankling--in there." And Schomberg tapped his manly breast. I sat half stunned by his irrelevant babble. Suddenly he gripped my forearm in an impressive and cau- tious manner, as if to lead me into a very cavern of confidence. "It`s nothing but enviousness," he said in a low- ered tone, which had a stimulating effect upon my wearied hearing. "I don`t suppose there is one person in this town that he isn`t envious of. I tell you he`s dangerous. Even I myself am not safe from him. I know for certain he tried to poi- son . . . ." "Oh, come now," I cried, revolted. "But I know for certain. The people themselves came and told me of it. He went about saying everywhere I was a worse pest to this town than the cholera. He had been talking against me ever since I opened this hotel. And he poisoned Captain Her- mann`s mind too. Last time the Diana was loading here Captain Hermann used to come in every day for a drink or a cigar. This time he hasn`t been here twice in a week. How do you account for that?" He squeezed my arm till he extorted from me some sort of mumble. "He makes ten times the money I do. I`ve another hotel to fight against, and there is no other tug on the river. I am not in his way, am I? He wouldn`t be fit to run an hotel if he tried. But that`s just his nature. He can`t bear to think I am mak- ing a living. I only hope it makes him properly wretched. He`s like that in everything. He would like to keep a decent table well enough. But no--for the sake of a few cents. Can`t do it. It`s too much for him. That`s what I call being a slave to it. But he`s mean enough to kick up a row when his nose gets tickled a bit. See that? That just paints him. Miserly and envious. You can`t account for it any other way. Can you? I have been studying him these three years." He was anxious I should assent to his theory. And indeed on thinking it over it would have been plausible enough if there hadn`t been always the essential falseness of irresponsibility in Schom- berg`s chatter. However, I was not disposed to in- vestigate the psychology of Falk. I was engaged just then in eating despondently a piece of stale Dutch cheese, being too much crushed to care what I swallowed myself, let along bothering my head about Falk`s ideas of gastronomy. I could expect from their study no clue to his conduct in matters of business, which seemed to me totally unrestrained by morality or even by the commonest sort of de- cency. How insignificant and contemptible I must appear, for the fellow to dare treat me like this--I reflected suddenly, writhing in silent agony. And I consigned Falk and all his peculiarities to the devil with so much mental fervour as to forget Schom- berg`s existence, till he grabbed my arm urgently. "Well, you may think and think till every hair of your head falls off, captain; but you can`t explain it in any other way." For the sake of peace and quietness I admitted hurriedly that I couldn`t: persuaded that now he would leave off. But the only result was to make his moist face shine with the pride of cunning. He removed his hand for a moment to scare a black mass of flies off the sugar-basin and caught hold of my arm again. "To be sure. And in the same way everybody is aware he would like to get married. Only he can`t. Let me quote you an instance. Well, two years ago a Miss Vanlo, a very ladylike girl, came from home to keep house for her brother, Fred, who had an en- gineering shop for small repairs by the water side. Suddenly Falk takes to going up to their bunga- low after dinner, and sitting for hours in the veran- dah saying nothing. The poor girl couldn`t tell for the life of her what to do with such a man, so she would keep on playing the piano and singing to him evening after evening till she was ready to drop. And it wasn`t as if she had been a strong young woman either. She was thirty, and the cli- mate had been playing the deuce with her. Then-- don`t you know--Fred had to sit up with them for propriety, and during whole weeks on end never got a single chance to get to bed before midnight. That was not pleasant for a tired man--was it? And besides Fred had worries then because his shop didn`t pay and he was dropping money fast. He just longed to get away from here and try his luck somewhere else, but for the sake of his sister he hung on and on till he ran himself into debt over his ears--I can tell you. I, myself, could show a hand- ful of his chits for meals and drinks in my drawer. I could never find out tho` where he found all the money at last. Can`t be but he must have got some- thing out of that brother of his, a coal merchant in Port Said. Anyhow he paid everybody before he left, but the girl nearly broke her heart. Disap- pointment, of course, and at her age, don`t you know. . . . Mrs. Schomberg here was very friendly with her, and she could tell you. Awful despair. Fainting fits. It was a scandal. A notorious scan- dal. To that extent that old Mr. Siegers--not your present charterer, but Mr. Siegers the father, the old gentleman who retired from business on a fortune and got buried at sea going home, HE had to interview Falk in his private office. He was a man who could speak like a Dutch Uncle, and, be- sides, Messrs. Siegers had been helping Falk with a good bit of money from the start. In fact you may say they made him as far as that goes. It so happened that just at the time he turned up here, their firm was chartering a lot of sailing ships every year, and it suited their business that there should be good towing facilities on the river. See? . . . Well--there`s always an ear at the keyhole-- isn`t there? In fact," he lowered his tone confiden- tially, "in this case a good friend of mine; a man you can see here any evening; only they conversed rather low. Anyhow my friend`s certain that Falk was trying to make all sorts of excuses, and old Mr. Siegers was coughing a lot. And yet Falk wanted all the time to be married too. Why! It`s notorious the man has been longing for years to make a home for himself. Only he can`t face the expense. When it comes to putting his hand in his pocket-- it chokes him off. That`s the truth and no other. I`ve always said so, and everybody agrees with me by this time. What do you think of that--eh?" He appealed confidently to my indignation, but having a mind to annoy him I remarked, "that it seemed to me very pitiful--if true." He bounced in his chair as if I had run a pin into him. I don`t know what he might have said, only at that moment we heard through the half open door of the billiard-room the footsteps of two men entering from the verandah, a murmur of two voices; at the sharp tapping of a coin on a table Mrs. Schomberg half rose irresolutely. "Sit still," he hissed at her, and then, in an hospitable, jovial tone, contrasting amazingly with the angry glance that had made his wife sink in her chair, he cried very loud: "Tiffin still going on in here, gentle- men." There was no answer, but the voices dropped sud- denly. The head Chinaman went out. We heard the clink of ice in the glasses, pouring sounds, the shuffling of feet, the scraping of chairs. Schom- berg, after wondering in a low mutter who the devil could be there at this time of the day, got up napkin in hand to peep through the doorway cautiously. He retreated rapidly on tip-toe, and whispering be- hind his hand informed me that it was Falk, Falk himself who was in there, and, what`s more, he had Captain Hermann with him. The return of the tug from the outer Roads was unexpected but possible, for Falk had taken away the Diana at half-past five, and it was now two o`clock. Schomberg wished me to observe that neither of these men would spend a dollar on a tiffin, which they must have wanted. But by the time I was ready to leave the dining-room Falk had gone. I heard the last of his big boots on the planks of the verandah. Hermann was sitting quite alone in the large, wooden room with the two lifeless billiard tables shrouded in striped covers, mopping his face diligently. He wore his best go-ashore clothes, a stiff collar, black coat, large white waistcoat, grey trousers. A white cotton sunshade with a cane han- dle reposed between his legs, his side whiskers were neatly brushed, his chin had been freshly shaved; and he only distantly resembled the dishevelled and terrified man in a snuffy night shirt and ignoble old trousers I had seen in the morning hanging on to the wheel of the Diana. He gave a start at my entrance, and addressed me at once in some confusion, but with genuine ea- gerness. He was anxious to make it clear he had nothing to do with what he called the "tam piz- ness" of the morning. It was most inconvenient. He had reckoned upon another day up in town to settle his bills and sign certain papers. There were also some few stores to come, and sundry pieces of "my ironwork," as he called it quaintly, landed for repairs, had been left behind. Now he would have to hire a native boat to take all this out to the ship. It would cost five or six dollars perhaps. He had had no warning from Falk. Nothing. . . . He hit the table with his dumpy fist. . . . Der ver- fluchte Kerl came in the morning like a "tam` ropper," making a great noise, and took him away. His mate was not prepared, his ship was moored fast--he protested it was shameful to come upon a man in that way. Shameful! Yet such was the power Falk had on the river that when I suggested in a chilling tone that he might have simply refused to have his ship moved, Hermann was quite startled at the idea. I never realised so well before that this is an age of steam. The exclusive possession of a marine boiler had given Falk the whiphand of us all. Hermann, recovering, put it to me appealingly that I knew very well how unsafe it was to contra- dict that fellow. At this I only smiled distantly. "Der Kerl!" he cried. He was sorry he had not refused. He was indeed. The damage! The dam- age! What for all that damage! There was no occasion for damage. Did I know how much dam- age he had done? It gave me a certain satisfaction to tell him that I had heard his old waggon of a ship crack fore and aft as she went by. "You passed close enough to me," I added significantly. He threw both his hands up to heaven at the rec- ollection. One of them grasped by the middle the white parasol, and he resembled curiously a carica- ture of a shopkeeping citizen in one of his own Ger- man comic papers. "Ach! That was dangerous," he cried. I was amused. But directly he added with an appearance of simplicity, "The side of your iron ship would have been crushed in like-- like this matchbox." "Would it?" I growled, much less amused now; but by the time I had decided that this remark was not meant for a dig at me he had worked himself into a high state of resentfulness against Falk. The inconvenience, the damage, the expense! Gott- ferdam! Devil take the fellow. Behind the bar Schomberg with a cigar in his teeth, pretended to be writing with a pencil on a large sheet of paper; and as Hermann`s excitement increased it made me comfortingly aware of my own calmness and supe- riority. But it occurred to me while I listened to his revilings, that after all the good man had come up in the tug. There perhaps--since he must come to town--he had no option. But evidently he had had a drink with Falk, either accepted or offered. How was that? So I checked him by saying loftily that I hoped he would make Falk pay for every penny of the damage. "That`s it! That`s it! Go for him," called out Schomberg from the bar, flinging his pencil down and rubbing his hands. We ignored his noise. But Hermann`s excite- ment suddenly went off the boil as when you remove a saucepan from the fire. I urged on his considera- tion that he had done now with Falk and Falk`s con- founded tug. He, Hermann, would not, perhaps, turn up again in this part of the world for years to come, since he was going to sell the Diana at the end of this very trip ("Go home passenger in a mail boat," he murmured mechanically). He was there- fore safe from Falk`s malice. All he had to do was to race off to his consignees and stop payment of the towage bill before Falk had the time to get in and lift the money. Nothing could have been less in the spirit of my advice than the thoughtful way in which he set about to make his parasol stay propped against the edge of the table. While I watched his concentrated efforts with as- tonishment he threw at me one or two perplexed, half-shy glances. Then he sat down. "That`s all very well," he said reflectively. It cannot be doubted that the man had been thrown off his balance by being hauled out of the harbour against his wish. His stolidity had been profoundly stirred, else he would never have made up his mind to ask me unexpectedly whether I had not remarked that Falk had been casting eyes upon his niece. "No more than myself," I answered with literal truth. The girl was of the sort one necessa- rily casts eyes at in a sense. She made no noise, but she filled most satisfactorily a good bit of space. "But you, captain, are not the same kind of man," observed Hermann. I was not, I am happy to say, in a position to deny this. "What about the lady?" I could not help asking. At this he gazed for a time into my face, earnestly, and made as if to change the sub- ject. I heard him beginning to mutter something unexpected, about his children growing old enough to require schooling. He would have to leave them ashore with their grandmother when he took up that new command he expected to get in Germany. This constant harping on his domestic arrange- ments was funny. I suppose it must have been like the prospect of a complete alteration in his life. An epoch. He was going, too, to part with the Diana! He had served in her for years. He had inherited her. From an uncle, if I remember rightly. And the future loomed big before him, occupying his thought exclusively with all its aspects as on the eve of a venturesome enterprise. He sat there frowning and biting his lip, and suddenly he began to fume and fret. I discovered to my momentary amusement that he seemed to imagine I could, should or ought, have caused Falk in some way to pronounce him- self. Such a hope was incomprehensible, but funny. Then the contact with all this foolishness irritated me. I said crossly that I had seen no symptoms, but if there were any--since he, Hermann, was so sure--then it was still worse. What pleasure Falk found in humbugging people in just that way I couldn`t say. It was, however, my solemn duty to warn him. It had lately, I said, come to my knowl- edge that there was a man (not a very long time ago either) who had been taken in just like this. All this passed in undertones, and at this point Schomberg, exasperated at our secrecy, went out of the room slamming the door with a crash that positively lifted us in our chairs. This, or else what I had said, huffed my Hermann, He supposed, with a contemptuous toss of his head towards the door which trembled yet, that I had got hold of some of that man`s silly tales. It looked, indeed, as though his mind had been thoroughly poisoned against Schomberg. "His tales were--they were," he re- peated, seeking for the word--"trash." They were trash, he reiterated, and moreover I was young yet . . . This horrid aspersion (I regret I am no longer exposed to that sort of insult) made me huffy too. I felt ready in my own mind to back up every asser- tion of Schomberg`s and on any subject. In a mo- ment, devil only knows why, Hermann and I were looking at each other most inimically. He caught up his hat without more ado and I gave myself the pleasure of calling after him: "Take my advice and make Falk pay for break- ing up your ship. You aren`t likely to get any- thing else out of him." When I got on board my ship later on, the old mate, who was very full of the events of the morn- ing, remarked: "I saw the tug coming back from the outer Roads just before two P.M." (He never by any chance used the words morning or afternoon. Always P.M. or A.M., log-book style.) "Smart work that. Man`s always in a state of hurry. He`s a regular chucker-out, ain`t he, sir? There`s a few pubs I know of in the East-end of London that would be all the better for one of his sort around the bar." He chuckled at his joke. "A regular chucker-out. Now he has fired out that Dutchman head over heels, I suppose our turn`s coming to-morrow morning." We were all on deck at break of day (even the sick--poor devils--had crawled out) ready to cast off in the twinkling of an eye. Nothing came. Falk did not come. At last, when I began to think that probably something had gone wrong in his engine-room, we perceived the tug going by, full pelt, down the river, as if we hadn`t existed. For a moment I entertained the wild notion that he was going to turn round in the next reach. Afterwards I watched his smoke appear above the plain, now here, now there, according to the windings of the river. It disappeared. Then without a word I went down to breakfast. I just simply went down to breakfast. Not one of us uttered a sound till the mate, after imbibing--by means of suction out of a saucer-- his second cup of tea, exclaimed: "Where the devil is the man gone to?" "Courting!" I shouted, with such a fiendish laugh that the old chap didn`t venture to open his lips any more. I started to the office perfectly calm. Calm with excessive rage. Evidently they knew all about it already, and they treated me to a show of conster- nation. The manager, a soft-footed, immensely obese man, breathing short, got up to meet me, while all round the room the young clerks, bend- ing over the papers on their desks, cast upward glances in my direction. The fat man, without waiting for my complaint, wheezing heavily and in a tone as if he himself were incredulous, con- veyed to me the news that Falk--Captain Falk-- had declined--had absolutely declined--to tow my ship--to have anything to do with my ship--this day or any other day. Never! I did my best to preserve a cool appearance, but, all the same, I must have shown how much taken aback I was. We were talking in the middle of the room. Suddenly behind my back some ass blew his nose with great force, and at the same time an- other quill-driver jumped up and went out on the landing hastily. It occurred to me I was cutting a foolish figure there. I demanded angrily to see the principal in his private room. The skin of Mr. Siegers` head showed dead white between the iron grey streaks of hair lying plas- tered cross-wise from ear to ear over the top of his skull in the manner of a bandage. His narrow sunken face was of an uniform and permanent ter- ra-cotta colour, like a piece of pottery. He was sickly, thin, and short, with wrists like a boy of ten. But from that debile body there issued a bullying voice, tremendously loud, harsh and resonant, as if produced by some powerful mechanical contriv- ance in the nature of a fog-horn. I do not know what he did with it in the private life of his home, but in the larger sphere of business it presented the advantage of overcoming arguments without the slightest mental effort, by the mere volume of sound. We had had several passages of arms. It took me all I knew to guard the interests of my owners--whom, nota bene, I had never seen--while Siegers (who had made their acquaintance some years before, during a business tour in Australia) pretended to the knowledge of their innermost minds, and, in the character of "our very good friends," threw them perpetually at my head. He looked at me with a jaundiced eye (there was no love lost between us), and declared at once that it was strange, very strange. His pronunciation of English was so extravagant that I can`t even attempt to reproduce it. For instance, he said "Fferie strantch." Combined with the bellowing intonation it made the language of one`s childhood sound weirdly startling, and even if considered purely as a kind of unmeaning noise it filled you with astonishment at first. "They had," he con- tinued, "been acquainted with Captain Falk for very many years, and never had any reason. . . ." "That`s why I come to you, of course," I inter- rupted. "I`ve the right to know the meaning of this infernal nonsense." In the half light of the room, which was greenish, because of the tree-tops screening the window, I saw him writhe his meagre shoulders. It came into my head, as disconnected ideas will come at all sorts of times into one`s head, that this, most likely, was the very room where, if the tale were true, Falk had been lectured by Mr. Siegers, the father. Mr. Siegers` (the son`s) over- whelming voice, in brassy blasts, as though he had been trying to articulate his words through a trom- bone, was expressing his great regret at a conduct characterised by a very marked want of discre- tion. . . As I lived I was being lectured too! His deafening gibberish was difficult to follow, but it was MY conduct--mine!--that . . . Damn! I wasn`t going to stand this. "What on earth are you driving at?" I asked in a passion. I put my hat on my head (he never offered a seat to anybody), and as he seemed for the moment struck dumb by my irreverence, I turned my back on him and marched out. His vo- cal arrangements blared after me a few threats of coming down on the ship for the demurrage of the lighters, and all the other expenses consequent upon the delays arising from my frivolity. Once outside in the sunshine my head swam. It was no longer a question of mere delay. I per- ceived myself involved in hopeless and humiliating absurdities that were leading me to something very like a disaster. "Let us be calm," I muttered to myself, and ran into the shade of a leprous wall. From that short side-street I could see the broad main thoroughfare ruinous and gay, running away, away between stretches of decaying mason- ry, bamboo fences, ranges of arcades of brick and plaster, hovels of lath and mud, lofty temple gates of carved timber, huts of rotten mats--an im- mensely wide thoroughfare, loosely packed as far as the eye could reach with a barefooted and brown multitude paddling ankle deep in the dust. For a moment I felt myself about to go out of my mind with worry and desperation. Some allowance must be made for the feelings of a young man new to responsibility. I thought of my crew. Half of them were ill, and I really began to think that some of them would end by dy- ing on board if I couldn`t get them out to sea soon. Obviously I should have to take my ship down the river, either working under canvas or dredging with the anchor down; operations which, in com- mon with many modern sailors, I only knew theo- retically. And I almost shrank from undertaking them shorthanded and without local knowledge of the river bed, which is so necessary for the con- fident handling of the ship. There were no pilots, no beacons, no buoys of any sort; but there was a very devil of a current for anybody to see, no end of shoal places, and at least two obviously awkward turns of the channel between me and the sea. But how dangerous these turns were I would not tell. I didn`t even know what my ship was capable of! I had never handled her in my life. A misunder- standing between a man and his ship in a difficult river with no room to make it up, is bound to end in trouble for the man. On the other hand, it must be owned I had not much reason to count upon a general run of good luck. And suppose I had the misfortune to pile her up high and dry on some beastly shoal? That would have been the final un- doing of that voyage. It was plain that if Falk refused to tow me out he would also refuse to pull me off. This meant--what? A day lost at the very best; but more likely a whole fortnight of frizzling on some pestilential mudflat, of desperate work, of discharging cargo; more than likely it meant borrowing money at an exorbitant rate of interest--from the Siegers` gang too at that. They were a power in the port. And that elderly seaman of mine, Gambril, had looked pretty ghastly when I went forward to dose him with quinine that morn- ing. HE would certainly die--not to speak of two or three others that seemed nearly as bad, and of the rest of them just ready to catch any tropical disease going. Horror, ruin and everlasting re- morse. And no help. None. I had fallen amongst a lot of unfriendly lunatics! At any rate, if I must take my ship down myself it was my duty to procure if possible some local knowledge. But that was not easy. The only per- son I could think of for that service was a certain Johnson, formerly captain of a country ship, but now spliced to a country wife and gone utterly to the bad. I had only heard of him in the vaguest way, as living concealed in the thick of two hundred thousand natives, and only emerging into the light of day for the purpose of hunting up some brandy. I had a notion that if I could lay my hands on him I would sober him on board my ship and use him for a pilot. Better than nothing. Once a sailor always a sailor--and he had known the river for years. But in our Consulate (where I arrived drip- ping after a sharp walk) they could tell me noth- ing. The excellent young men on the staff, though willing to help me, belonged to a sphere of the white colony for which that sort of Johnson does not exist. Their suggestion was that I should hunt the man up myself with the help of the Consulate`s constable--an ex-sergeant-major of a regiment of Hussars. This man, whose usual duty apparently consisted in sitting behind a little table in an outer room of Consular offices, when ordered to assist me in my search for Johnson displayed lots of energy and a marvellous amount of local knowledge of a sort. But he did not conceal an immense and scep- tical contempt for the whole business. We explored together on that afternoon an infinity of infamous grog shops, gambling dens, opium dens. We walked up narrow lanes where our gharry--a tiny box of a thing on wheels, attached to a jibbing Bur- mah pony--could by no means have passed. The constable seemed to be on terms of scornful inti- macy with Maltese, with Eurasians, with China- men, with Klings, and with the sweepers attached to a temple, with whom he talked at the gate. We interviewed also through a grating in a mud wall closing a blind alley an immensely corpulent Ital- ian, who, the ex-sergeant-major remarked to me perfunctorily, had "killed another man last year." Thereupon he addressed him as "Antonio" and "Old Buck," though that bloated carcase, appar- ently more than half filling the sort of cell where- in it sat, recalled rather a fat pig in a stye. Fa- miliar and never unbending, the sergeant chucked --absolutely chucked--under the chin a horribly wrinkled and shrivelled old hag propped on a stick, who had volunteered some sort of information: and with the same stolid face he kept up an animated conversation with the groups of swathed brown women, who sat smoking cheroots on the door-steps of a long range of clay hovels. We got out of the gharry and clambered into dwellings airy like packing crates, or descended into places sinister like cellars. We got in, we drove on, we got out again for the sole purpose, as it seemed, of looking behind a heap of rubble. The sun declined; my companion was curt and sardonic in his answers, but it appears we were just missing Johnson all along. At last our conveyance stopped once more with a jerk, and the driver jumping down opened the door. A black mudhole blocked the lane. A mound of garbage crowned with the dead body of a dog ar- rested us not. An empty Australian beef tin bounded cheerily before the toe of my boot. Sud- denly we clambered through a gap in a prickly fence.
|
