Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (826 page)

A stupid job, and fit only for an old man, my comrades used to tell me, to be the night-watchman of a captive (though honoured) ship.  And generally the oldest of the able seamen in a ship’s crew does get it.  But sometimes neither the oldest nor any other fairly steady seaman is forthcoming.  Ships’ crews had the trick of melting away swiftly in those days.  So, probably on account of my youth, innocence, and pensive habits (which made me sometimes dilatory in my work about the rigging), I was suddenly nominated, in our chief mate Mr. B-’s most sardonic tones, to that enviable situation.  I do not regret the experience.  The night humours of the town descended from the street to the waterside in the still watches of the night: larrikins rushing down in bands to settle some quarrel by a stand-up fight, away from the police, in an indistinct ring half hidden by piles of cargo, with the sounds of blows, a groan now and then, the stamping of feet, and the cry of “Time!” rising suddenly above the sinister and excited murmurs; night-prowlers, pursued or pursuing, with a stifled shriek followed by a profound silence, or slinking stealthily along-side like ghosts, and addressing me from the quay below in mysterious tones with incomprehensible propositions.  The cabmen, too, who twice a week, on the night when the A.S.N. Company’s passenger-boat was due to arrive, used to range a battalion of blazing lamps opposite the ship, were very amusing in their way.  They got down from their perches and told each other impolite stories in racy language, every word of which reached me distinctly over the bulwarks as I sat smoking on the main-hatch.  On one occasion I had an hour or so of a most intellectual conversation with a person whom I could not see distinctly, a gentleman from England, he said, with a cultivated voice, I on deck and he on the quay sitting on the case of a piano (landed out of our hold that very afternoon), and smoking a cigar which smelt very good.  We touched, in our discourse, upon science, politics, natural history, and operatic singers.  Then, after remarking abruptly, “You seem to be rather intelligent, my man,” he informed me pointedly that his name was Mr. Senior, and walked off — to his hotel, I suppose.  Shadows!  Shadows!  I think I saw a white whisker as he turned under the lamp-post.  It is a shock to think that in the natural course of nature he must be dead by now.  There was nothing to object to in his intelligence but a little dogmatism maybe.  And his name was Senior!  Mr. Senior!

The position had its drawbacks, however.  One wintry, blustering, dark night in July, as I stood sleepily out of the rain under the break of the poop something resembling an ostrich dashed up the gangway.  I say ostrich because the creature, though it ran on two legs, appeared to help its progress by working a pair of short wings; it was a man, however, only his coat, ripped up the back and flapping in two halves above his shoulders, gave him that weird and fowl-like appearance.  At least, I suppose it was his coat, for it was impossible to make him out distinctly.  How he managed to come so straight upon me, at speed and without a stumble over a strange deck, I cannot imagine.  He must have been able to see in the dark better than any cat.  He overwhelmed me with panting entreaties to let him take shelter till morning in our forecastle.  Following my strict orders, I refused his request, mildly at first, in a sterner tone as he insisted with growing impudence.

“For God’s sake let me, matey!  Some of ‘em are after me — and I’ve got hold of a ticker here.”

“You clear out of this!” I said.

“Don’t be hard on a chap, old man!” he whined pitifully.

“Now then, get ashore at once.  Do you hear?”

Silence.  He appeared to cringe, mute, as if words had failed him through grief; then — bang! came a concussion and a great flash of light in which he vanished, leaving me prone on my back with the most abominable black eye that anybody ever got in the faithful discharge of duty.  Shadows!  Shadows!  I hope he escaped the enemies he was fleeing from to live and flourish to this day.  But his fist was uncommonly hard and his aim miraculously true in the dark.

There were other experiences, less painful and more funny for the most part, with one amongst them of a dramatic complexion; but the greatest experience of them all was Mr. B-, our chief mate himself.

He used to go ashore every night to foregather in some hotel’s parlour with his crony, the mate of the barque
Cicero
, lying on the other side of the Circular Quay.  Late at night I would hear from afar their stumbling footsteps and their voices raised in endless argument.  The mate of the
Cicero
was seeing his friend on board.  They would continue their senseless and muddled discourse in tones of profound friendship for half an hour or so at the shore end of our gangway, and then I would hear Mr. B- insisting that he must see the other on board his ship.  And away they would go, their voices, still conversing with excessive amity, being heard moving all round the harbour.  It happened more than once that they would thus perambulate three or four times the distance, each seeing the other on board his ship out of pure and disinterested affection.  Then, through sheer weariness, or perhaps in a moment of forgetfulness, they would manage to part from each other somehow, and by-and-by the planks of our long gangway would bend and creak under the weight of Mr. B- coming on board for good at last.

On the rail his burly form would stop and stand swaying.

“Watchman!”

“Sir.”

A pause.

He waited for a moment of steadiness before negotiating the three steps of the inside ladder from rail to deck; and the watchman, taught by experience, would forbear offering help which would be received as an insult at that particular stage of the mate’s return.  But many times I trembled for his neck.  He was a heavy man.

Then with a rush and a thump it would be done.  He never had to pick himself up; but it took him a minute or so to pull himself together after the descent.

“Watchman!”

“Sir.”

“Captain aboard?”

“Yes, sir.”

Pause.

“Dog aboard?”

“Yes, sir.”

Pause.

Our dog was a gaunt and unpleasant beast, more like a wolf in poor health than a dog, and I never noticed Mr. B- at any other time show the slightest interest in the doings of the animal.  But that question never failed.

“Let’s have your arm to steady me along.”

I was always prepared for that request.  He leaned on me heavily till near enough the cabin-door to catch hold of the handle.  Then he would let go my arm at once.

“That’ll do.  I can manage now.”

And he could manage.  He could manage to find his way into his berth, light his lamp, get into his bed — ay, and get out of it when I called him at half-past five, the first man on deck, lifting the cup of morning coffee to his lips with a steady hand, ready for duty as though he had virtuously slept ten solid hours — a better chief officer than many a man who had never tasted grog in his life.  He could manage all that, but could never manage to get on in life.

Only once he failed to seize the cabin-door handle at the first grab.  He waited a little, tried again, and again failed.  His weight was growing heavier on my arm.  He sighed slowly.

“D-n that handle!”

Without letting go his hold of me he turned about, his face lit up bright as day by the full moon.

“I wish she were out at sea,” he growled savagely.

“Yes, sir.”

I felt the need to say something, because he hung on to me as if lost, breathing heavily.

“Ports are no good — ships rot, men go to the devil!”

I kept still, and after a while he repeated with a sigh.

“I wish she were at sea out of this.”

“So do I, sir,” I ventured.

Holding my shoulder, he turned upon me.

“You!  What’s that to you where she is?  You don’t — drink.”

And even on that night he “managed it” at last.  He got hold of the handle.  But he did not manage to light his lamp (I don’t think he even tried), though in the morning as usual he was the first on deck, bull-necked, curly-headed, watching the hands turn-to with his sardonic expression and unflinching gaze.

I met him ten years afterwards, casually, unexpectedly, in the street, on coming out of my consignee office.  I was not likely to have forgotten him with his “I can manage now.”  He recognised me at once, remembered my name, and in what ship I had served under his orders.  He looked me over from head to foot.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I am commanding a little barque,” I said, “loading here for Mauritius.”  Then, thoughtlessly, I added: “And what are you doing, Mr. B-?”

“I,” he said, looking at me unflinchingly, with his old sardonic grin — ”I am looking for something to do.”

I felt I would rather have bitten out my tongue.  His jet-black, curly hair had turned iron-gray; he was scrupulously neat as ever, but frightfully threadbare.  His shiny boots were worn down at heel.  But he forgave me, and we drove off together in a hansom to dine on board my ship.  He went over her conscientiously, praised her heartily, congratulated me on my command with absolute sincerity.  At dinner, as I offered him wine and beer he shook his head, and as I sat looking at him interrogatively, muttered in an undertone:

“I’ve given up all that.”

After dinner we came again on deck.  It seemed as though he could not tear himself away from the ship.  We were fitting some new lower rigging, and he hung about, approving, suggesting, giving me advice in his old manner.  Twice he addressed me as “My boy,” and corrected himself quickly to “Captain.”  My mate was about to leave me (to get married), but I concealed the fact from Mr. B-.  I was afraid he would ask me to give him the berth in some ghastly jocular hint that I could not refuse to take.  I was afraid.  It would have been impossible.  I could not have given orders to Mr. B-, and I am sure he would not have taken them from me very long.  He could not have managed that, though he had managed to break himself from drink — too late.

He said good-bye at last.  As I watched his burly, bull-necked figure walk away up the street, I wondered with a sinking heart whether he had much more than the price of a night’s lodging in his pocket.  And I understood that if that very minute I were to call out after him, he would not even turn his head.  He, too, is no more than a shadow, but I seem to hear his words spoken on the moonlit deck of the old
Duke
— :

“Ports are no good — ships rot, men go to the devil!”

XXXV.

“Ships!” exclaimed an elderly seaman in clean shore togs.  “Ships” — and his keen glance, turning away from my face, ran along the vista of magnificent figure-heads that in the late seventies used to overhang in a serried rank the muddy pavement by the side of the New South Dock — ”ships are all right; it’s the men in ‘em. . .”

Fifty hulls, at least, moulded on lines of beauty and speed — hulls of wood, of iron, expressing in their forms the highest achievement of modern ship-building — lay moored all in a row, stem to quay, as if assembled there for an exhibition, not of a great industry, but of a great art.  Their colours were gray, black, dark green, with a narrow strip of yellow moulding defining their sheer, or with a row of painted ports decking in warlike decoration their robust flanks of cargo-carriers that would know no triumph but of speed in carrying a burden, no glory other than of a long service, no victory but that of an endless, obscure contest with the sea.  The great empty hulls with swept holds, just out of dry-dock, with their paint glistening freshly, sat high-sided with ponderous dignity alongside the wooden jetties, looking more like unmovable buildings than things meant to go afloat; others, half loaded, far on the way to recover the true sea-physiognomy of a ship brought down to her load-line, looked more accessible.  Their less steeply slanting gangways seemed to invite the strolling sailors in search of a berth to walk on board and try “for a chance” with the chief mate, the guardian of a ship’s efficiency.  As if anxious to remain unperceived amongst their overtopping sisters, two or three “finished” ships floated low, with an air of straining at the leash of their level headfasts, exposing to view their cleared decks and covered hatches, prepared to drop stern first out of the labouring ranks, displaying the true comeliness of form which only her proper sea-trim gives to a ship.  And for a good quarter of a mile, from the dockyard gate to the farthest corner, where the old housed-in hulk, the
President
(drill-ship, then, of the Naval Reserve), used to lie with her frigate side rubbing against the stone of the quay, above all these hulls, ready and unready, a hundred and fifty lofty masts, more or less, held out the web of their rigging like an immense net, in whose close mesh, black against the sky, the heavy yards seemed to be entangled and suspended.

It was a sight.  The humblest craft that floats makes its appeal to a seaman by the faithfulness of her life; and this was the place where one beheld the aristocracy of ships.  It was a noble gathering of the fairest and the swiftest, each bearing at the bow the carved emblem of her name, as in a gallery of plaster-casts, figures of women with mural crowns, women with flowing robes, with gold fillets on their hair or blue scarves round their waists, stretching out rounded arms as if to point the way; heads of men helmeted or bare; full lengths of warriors, of kings, of statesmen, of lords and princesses, all white from top to toe; with here and there a dusky turbaned figure, bedizened in many colours, of some Eastern sultan or hero, all inclined forward under the slant of mighty bowsprits as if eager to begin another run of 11,000 miles in their leaning attitudes.  These were the fine figure-heads of the finest ships afloat.  But why, unless for the love of the life those effigies shared with us in their wandering impassivity, should one try to reproduce in words an impression of whose fidelity there can be no critic and no judge, since such an exhibition of the art of shipbuilding and the art of figure-head carving as was seen from year’s end to year’s end in the open-air gallery of the New South Dock no man’s eye shall behold again?  All that patient, pale company of queens and princesses, of kings and warriors, of allegorical women, of heroines and statesmen and heathen gods, crowned, helmeted, bare-headed, has run for good off the sea stretching to the last above the tumbling foam their fair, rounded arms; holding out their spears, swords, shields, tridents in the same unwearied, striving forward pose.  And nothing remains but lingering perhaps in the memory of a few men, the sound of their names, vanished a long time ago from the first page of the great London dailies; from big posters in railway-stations and the doors of shipping offices; from the minds of sailors, dockmasters, pilots, and tugmen; from the hail of gruff voices and the flutter of signal flags exchanged between ships closing upon each other and drawing apart in the open immensity of the sea.