Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (429 page)

Powell explained to me that no sound did or perhaps could reach him from the saloon.  The first sign — and we must remember that he was using his eyes for all they were worth — was an unaccountable movement of the curtain.  It was wavy and very slight; just perceptible in fact to the sharpened faculties of a secret watcher; for it can’t be denied that our wits are much more alert when engaged in wrong-doing (in which one mustn’t be found out) than in a righteous occupation.

He became suspicious, with no one and nothing definite in his mind.  He was suspicious of the curtain itself and observed it.  It looked very innocent.  Then just as he was ready to put it down to a trick of imagination he saw trembling movements where the two curtains joined.  Yes!  Somebody else besides himself had been watching Captain Anthony.  He owns artlessly that this roused his indignation.  It was really too much of a good thing.  In this state of intense antagonism he was startled to observe tips of fingers fumbling with the dark stuff.  Then they grasped the edge of the further curtain and hung on there, just fingers and knuckles and nothing else.  It made an abominable sight.  He was looking at it with unaccountable repulsion when a hand came into view; a short, puffy, old, freckled hand projecting into the lamplight, followed by a white wrist, an arm in a grey coat-sleeve, up to the elbow, beyond the elbow, extended tremblingly towards the tray.  Its appearance was weird and nauseous, fantastic and silly.  But instead of grabbing the bottle as Powell expected, this hand, tremulous with senile eagerness, swerved to the glass, rested on its edge for a moment (or so it looked from above) and went back with a jerk.  The gripping fingers of the other hand vanished at the same time, and young Powell staring at the motionless curtains could indulge for a moment the notion that he had been dreaming.

But that notion did not last long.  Powell, after repressing his first impulse to spring for the companion and hammer at the captain’s door, took steps to have himself relieved by the boatswain.  He was in a state of distraction as to his feelings and yet lucid as to his mind.  He remained on the skylight so as to keep his eye on the tray.

Still the captain did not appear in the saloon.  “If he had,” said Mr. Powell, “I knew what to do.  I would have put my elbow through the pane instantly — crash.”

I asked him why?

“It was the quickest dodge for getting him away from that tray,” he explained.  “My throat was so dry that I didn’t know if I could shout loud enough.  And this was not a case for shouting, either.”

The boatswain, sleepy and disgusted, arriving on the poop, found the second officer doubled up over the end of the skylight in a pose which might have been that of severe pain.  And his voice was so changed that the man, though naturally vexed at being turned out, made no comment on the plea of sudden indisposition which young Powell put forward.

The rapidity with which the sick man got off the poop must have astonished the boatswain.  But Powell, at the moment he opened the door leading into the saloon from the quarter-deck, had managed to control his agitation.  He entered swiftly but without noise and found himself in the dark part of the saloon, the strong sheen of the lamp on the other side of the curtains visible only above the rod on which they ran.  The door of Mr. Smith’s cabin was in that dark part.  He passed by it assuring himself by a quick side glance that it was imperfectly closed.  “Yes,” he said to me.  “The old man must have been watching through the crack.  Of that I am certain; but it was not for me that he was watching and listening.  Horrible!  Surely he must have been startled to hear and see somebody he did not expect.  He could not possibly guess why I was coming in, but I suppose he must have been concerned.”  Concerned indeed!  He must have been thunderstruck, appalled.

Powell’s only distinct aim was to remove the suspected tumbler.  He had no other plan, no other intention, no other thought.  Do away with it in some manner.  Snatch it up and run out with it.

You know that complete mastery of one fixed idea, not a reasonable but an emotional mastery, a sort of concentrated exaltation.  Under its empire men rush blindly through fire and water and opposing violence, and nothing can stop them — unless, sometimes, a grain of sand.  For his blind purpose (and clearly the thought of Mrs. Anthony was at the bottom of it) Mr. Powell had plenty of time.  What checked him at the crucial moment was the familiar, harmless aspect of common things, the steady light, the open book on the table, the solitude, the peace, the home-like effect of the place.  He held the glass in his hand; all he had to do was to vanish back beyond the curtains, flee with it noiselessly into the night on deck, fling it unseen overboard.  A minute or less.  And then all that would have happened would have been the wonder at the utter disappearance of a glass tumbler, a ridiculous riddle in pantry-affairs beyond the wit of anyone on board to solve.  The grain of sand against which Powell stumbled in his headlong career was a moment of incredulity as to the truth of his own conviction because it had failed to affect the safe aspect of familiar things.  He doubted his eyes too.  He must have dreamt it all!  “I am dreaming now,” he said to himself.  And very likely for a few seconds he must have looked like a man in a trance or profoundly asleep on his feet, and with a glass of brandy-and-water in his hand.

What woke him up and, at the same time, fixed his feet immovably to the spot, was a voice asking him what he was doing there in tones of thunder.  Or so it sounded to his ears.  Anthony, opening the door of his stern-cabin had naturally exclaimed.  What else could you expect?  And the exclamation must have been fairly loud if you consider the nature of the sight which met his eye.  There, before him, stood his second officer, a seemingly decent, well-bred young man, who, being on duty, had left the deck and had sneaked into the saloon, apparently for the inexpressibly mean purpose of drinking up what was left of his captain’s brandy-and-water.  There he was, caught absolutely with the glass in his hand.

But the very monstrosity of appearances silenced Anthony after the first exclamation; and young Powell felt himself pierced through and through by the overshadowed glance of his captain.  Anthony advanced quietly.  The first impulse of Mr. Powell, when discovered, had been to dash the glass on the deck.  He was in a sort of panic.  But deep down within him his wits were working, and the idea that if he did that he could prove nothing and that the story he had to tell was completely incredible, restrained him.  The captain came forward slowly.  With his eyes now close to his, Powell, spell-bound, numb all over, managed to lift one finger to the deck above mumbling the explanatory words, “Boatswain on the poop.”

The captain moved his head slightly as much as to say, “That’s all right” — and this was all.  Powell had no voice, no strength.  The air was unbreathable, thick, sticky, odious, like hot jelly in which all movements became difficult.  He raised the glass a little with immense difficulty and moved his trammelled lips sufficiently to form the words:

“Doctored.”

Anthony glanced at it for an instant, only for an instant, and again fastened his eyes on the face of his second mate.  Powell added a fervent “I believe” and put the glass down on the tray.  The captain’s glance followed the movement and returned sternly to his face.  The young man pointed a finger once more upwards and squeezed out of his iron-bound throat six consecutive words of further explanation.  “Through the skylight.  The white pane.”

The captain raised his eyebrows very much at this, while young Powell, ashamed but desperate, nodded insistently several times.  He meant to say that: Yes.  Yes.  He had done that thing.  He had been spying . . .  The captain’s gaze became thoughtful.  And, now the confession was over, the iron-bound feeling of Powell’s throat passed away giving place to a general anxiety which from his breast seemed to extend to all the limbs and organs of his body.  His legs trembled a little, his vision was confused, his mind became blankly expectant.  But he was alert enough.  At a movement of Anthony he screamed in a strangled whisper.

“Don’t, sir!  Don’t touch it.”

The captain pushed aside Powell’s extended arm, took up the glass and raised it slowly against the lamplight.  The liquid, of very pale amber colour, was clear, and by a glance the captain seemed to call Powell’s attention to the fact.  Powell tried to pronounce the word, “dissolved” but he only thought of it with great energy which however failed to move his lips.  Only when Anthony had put down the glass and turned to him he recovered such a complete command of his voice that he could keep it down to a hurried, forcible whisper — a whisper that shook him.

“Doctored!  I swear it!  I have seen.  Doctored!  I have seen.”

Not a feature of the captain’s face moved.  His was a calm to take one’s breath away.  It did so to young Powell.  Then for the first time Anthony made himself heard to the point.

“You did! . . . Who was it?”

And Powell gasped freely at last.  “A hand,” he whispered fearfully, “a hand and the arm — only the arm — like that.”

He advanced his own, slow, stealthy, tremulous in faithful reproduction, the tips of two fingers and the thumb pressed together and hovering above the glass for an instant — then the swift jerk back, after the deed.

“Like that,” he repeated growing excited.  “From behind this.”  He grasped the curtain and glaring at the silent Anthony flung it back disclosing the forepart of the saloon.  There was on one to be seen.

Powell had not expected to see anybody.  “But,” he said to me, “I knew very well there was an ear listening and an eye glued to the crack of a cabin door.  Awful thought.  And that door was in that part of the saloon remaining in the shadow of the other half of the curtain.  I pointed at it and I suppose that old man inside saw me pointing.  The captain had a wonderful self-command.  You couldn’t have guessed anything from his face.  Well, it was perhaps more thoughtful than usual.  And indeed this was something to think about.  But I couldn’t think steadily.  My brain would give a sort of jerk and then go dead again.  I had lost all notion of time, and I might have been looking at the captain for days and months for all I knew before I heard him whisper to me fiercely: “Not a word!”  This jerked me out of that trance I was in and I said “No!  No!  I didn’t mean even you.”

“I wanted to explain my conduct, my intentions, but I read in his eyes that he understood me and I was only too glad to leave off.  And there we were looking at each other, dumb, brought up short by the question “What next?”

“I thought Captain Anthony was a man of iron till I saw him suddenly fling his head to the right and to the left fiercely, like a wild animal at bay not knowing which way to break out . . . “

* * * * *

“Truly,” commented Marlow, “brought to bay was not a bad comparison; a better one than Mr. Powell was aware of.  At that moment the appearance of Flora could not but bring the tension to the breaking point.  She came out in all innocence but not without vague dread.  Anthony’s exclamation on first seeing Powell had reached her in her cabin, where, it seems, she was brushing her hair.  She had heard the very words.  “What are you doing here?”  And the unwonted loudness of the voice — his voice — breaking the habitual stillness of that hour would have startled a person having much less reason to be constantly apprehensive, than the captive of Anthony’s masterful generosity.  She had no means to guess to whom the question was addressed and it echoed in her heart, as Anthony’s voice always did.  Followed complete silence.  She waited, anxious, expectant, till she could stand the strain no longer, and with the weary mental appeal of the overburdened.  “My God!  What is it now?” she opened the door of her room and looked into the saloon.  Her first glance fell on Powell.  For a moment, seeing only the second officer with Anthony, she felt relieved and made as if to draw back; but her sharpened perception detected something suspicious in their attitudes, and she came forward slowly.

“I was the first to see Mrs. Anthony,” related Powell, “because I was facing aft.  The captain, noticing my eyes, looked quickly over his shoulder and at once put his finger to his lips to caution me.  As if I were likely to let out anything before her!  Mrs. Anthony had on a dressing-gown of some grey stuff with red facings and a thick red cord round her waist.  Her hair was down.  She looked a child; a pale-faced child with big blue eyes and a red mouth a little open showing a glimmer of white teeth.  The light fell strongly on her as she came up to the end of the table.  A strange child though; she hardly affected one like a child, I remember.  Do you know,” exclaimed Mr. Powell, who clearly must have been, like many seamen, an industrious reader, “do you know what she looked like to me with those big eyes and something appealing in her whole expression.  She looked like a forsaken elf.  Captain Anthony had moved towards her to keep her away from my end of the table, where the tray was.  I had never seen them so near to each other before, and it made a great contrast.  It was wonderful, for, with his beard cut to a point, his swarthy, sunburnt complexion, thin nose and his lean head there was something African, something Moorish in Captain Anthony.  His neck was bare; he had taken off his coat and collar and had drawn on his sleeping jacket in the time that he had been absent from the saloon.  I seem to see him now.  Mrs. Anthony too.  She looked from him to me — I suppose I looked guilty or frightened — and from me to him, trying to guess what there was between us two.  Then she burst out with a “What has happened?” which seemed addressed to me.  I mumbled “Nothing!  Nothing, ma’am,” which she very likely did not hear.

“You must not think that all this had lasted a long time.  She had taken fright at our behaviour and turned to the captain pitifully.  “What is it you are concealing from me?”  A straight question — eh?  I don’t know what answer the captain would have made.  Before he could even raise his eyes to her she cried out “Ah!  Here’s papa” in a sharp tone of relief, but directly afterwards she looked to me as if she were holding her breath with apprehension.  I was so interested in her that, how shall I say it, her exclamation made no connection in my brain at first.  I also noticed that she had sidled up a little nearer to Captain Anthony, before it occurred to me to turn my head.  I can tell you my neck stiffened in the twisted position from the shock of actually seeing that old man!  He had dared!  I suppose you think I ought to have looked upon him as mad.  But I couldn’t.  It would have been certainly easier.  But I could not.  You should have seen him.  First of all he was completely dressed with his very cap still on his head just as when he left me on deck two hours before, saying in his soft voice: “The moment has come to go to bed” — while he meant to go and do that thing and hide in his dark cabin, and watch the stuff do its work.  A cold shudder ran down my back.  He had his hands in the pockets of his jacket, his arms were pressed close to his thin, upright body, and he shuffled across the cabin with his short steps.  There was a red patch on each of his old soft cheeks as if somebody had been pinching them.  He drooped his head a little, and looked with a sort of underhand expectation at the captain and Mrs. Anthony standing close together at the other end of the saloon.  The calculating horrible impudence of it!  His daughter was there; and I am certain he had seen the captain putting his finger on his lips to warn me.  And then he had coolly come out!  He passed my imagination, I assure you.  After that one shiver his presence killed every faculty in me — wonder, horror, indignation.  I felt nothing in particular just as if he were still the old gentleman who used to talk to me familiarly every day on deck.  Would you believe it?”