He had perceived me, too. Something (unconscious exuberance of spirits perhaps) moved me to wave my hand to him elaborately. This lapse from good taste happened before I was aware that I was capable of it.
The impact of my impudence stopped him short, much as a bullet might have done. I verily believe he staggered, though as far as I could see he didn’t actually fall. I had gone past in a moment and did not turn my head. I had forgotten his existence.
The next ten minutes might have been ten seconds or ten centuries for all my consciousness had to do with it. People might have been falling dead around me, houses crumbling, guns firing, I wouldn’t have known. I was thinking: “By Jove! I have got it.” It being the command. It had come about in a way utterly unforeseen in my modest daydreams.
I perceived that my imagination had been running in conventional channels and that my hopes had always been drab stuff. I had envisaged a command as a result of a slow course of promotion in the employ of some highly respectable firm. The reward of faithful service. Well, faithful service was all right. One would naturally give that for one’s own sake, for the sake of the ship, for the love of the life of one’s choice; not for the sake of the reward.
There is something distasteful in the notion of a reward.
And now here I had my command, absolutely in my pocket, in a way undeniable indeed, but most unexpected; beyond my imaginings, outside all reasonable expectations, and even notwithstanding the existence of some sort of obscure intrigue to keep it away from me. It is true that the intrigue was feeble, but it helped the feeling of wonder—as if I had been specially destined for that ship I did not know, by some power higher than the prosaic agencies of the commercial world.
A strange sense of exultation began to creep into me. If I had worked for that command ten years or more there would have been nothing of the kind. I was a little frightened.
“Let us be calm,” I said to myself.
Outside the door of the Officers’ Home the wretched steward seemed to be waiting for me. There was a broad flight of a few steps, and he ran to and fro on the top of it as if chained there. A distressed cur. He looked as though his throat were too dry for him to bark.
I regret to say I stopped before going in. There had been a revolution in my moral nature. He waited open-mouthed, breathless, while I looked at him for half a minute.
“And you thought you could keep me out of it,” I said scathingly.
“You said you were going home,” he squeaked miserably. “You said so. You said so.”
“I wonder what Captain Ellis will have to say to that excuse,” I uttered slowly with a sinister meaning.
His lower jaw had been trembling all the time and his voice was like the bleating of a sick goat. “You have given me away? You have done for me?”
Neither his distress nor yet the sheer absurdity of it was able to disarm me. It was the first instance of harm being attempted to be done to me—at any rate, the first I had ever found out. And I was still young enough, still too much on this side of the shadow line, not to be surprised and indignant at such things.
I gazed at him inflexibly. Let the beggar suffer. He slapped his forehead and I passed in, pursued, into the dining room, by his screech: “I always said you’d be the death of me.”
This clamour not only overtook me, but went ahead as it were on to the verandah and brought out Captain Giles.
He stood before me in the doorway in all the commonplace solidity of his wisdom. The gold chain glittered on his breast. He clutched a smouldering pipe.
I extended my hand to him warmly and he seemed surprised, but did respond heartily enough in the end, with a faint smile of superior knowledge which cut my thanks short as if with a knife. I don’t think that more than one word came out. And even for that one, judging by the temperature of my face, I had blushed as if for a bad action. Assuming a detached tone, I wondered how on earth he had managed to spot the little underhand game that had been going on.
He murmured complacently that there were but few things done in the town that he could not see the inside of. And as to this house, he had been using it off and on for nearly ten years. Nothing that went on in it could escape his great experience. It had been no trouble to him. No trouble at all.
Then in his quiet, thick tone he wanted to know if I had complained formally of the steward’s action.
I said that I hadn’t—though, indeed, it was not for want of opportunity. Captain Ellis had gone for me bald-headed in a most ridiculous fashion for being out of the way when wanted.
“Funny old gentleman,” interjected Captain Giles. “What did you say to that?”
“I said simply that I came along the very moment I heard of his message. Nothing more. I didn’t want to hurt the steward. I would scorn to harm such an object. No. I made no complaint, but I believe he thinks I’ve done so. Let him think. He’s got a fright he won’t forget in a hurry, for Captain Ellis would kick him out into the middle of Asia. . . .”
“Wait a moment,” said Captain Giles, leaving me suddenly. I sat down feeling very tired, mostly in my head. Before I could start a train of thought he stood again before me, murmuring the excuse that he had to go and put the fellow’s mind at ease.
I looked up with surprise. But in reality I was indifferent. He explained that he had found the steward lying face downward on the horsehair sofa. He was all right now.
“He would not have died of fright,” I said contemptuously.
“No. But he might have taken an overdose out of one of them little bottles he keeps in his room,” Captain Giles argued seriously. “The confounded fool has tried to poison himself once—a few years ago.”
“Really,” I said without emotion. “He doesn’t seem very fit to live, anyhow.”
“As to that, it may be said of a good many.”
“Don’t exaggerate like this!” I protested, laughing irritably. “But I wonder what this part of the world would do if you were to leave off looking after it, Captain Giles? Here you have got me a command and saved the steward’s life in one afternoon. Though why you should have taken all that interest in either of us is more than I can understand.”
Captain Giles remained silent for a minute. Then gravely:
“He’s not a bad steward really. He can find a good cook, at any rate. And, what’s more, he can keep him when found. I remember the cooks we had here before his time! . . .”
I must have made a movement of impatience, because he interrupted himself with an apology for keeping me yarning there, while no doubt I needed all my time to get ready.
What I really needed was to be alone for a bit. I seized this opening hastily. My bedroom was a quiet refuge in an apparently uninhabited wing of the building. Having absolutely nothing to do (for I had not unpacked my things), I sat down on the bed and abandoned myself to the influences of the hour. To the unexpected influences. . . .
And first I wondered at my state of mind. Why was I not more surprised? Why? Here I was, invested with a command in the twinkling of an eye, not in the common course of human affairs, but more as if by enchantment. I ought to have been lost in astonishment. But I wasn’t. I was very much like people in fairy tales. Nothing ever astonishes them. When a fully appointed gala coach is produced out of a pumpkin to take her to a ball, Cinderella does not exclaim. She gets in quietly and drives away to her high fortune.
Captain Ellis (a fierce sort of fairy) had produced a command out of a drawer almost as unexpectedly as in a fairy tale. But a command is an abstract idea, and it seemed a sort of “lesser marvel” till it flashed upon me that it involved the concrete existence of a ship.
A ship! My ship! She was mine, more absolutely mine for possession and care than anything in the world; an object of responsibility and devotion. She was there waiting for me, spellbound, unable to move, to live, to get out into the world (till I came), like an enchanted prin
cess. Her call had come to me as if from the clouds. I had never suspected her existence. I didn’t know how she looked, I had barely heard her name, and yet we were indissolubly united for a certain portion of our future, to sink or swim together!
A sudden passion of anxious impatience rushed through my veins, gave me such a sense of the intensity of existence as I have never felt before or since. I discovered how much of a seaman I was, in heart, in mind, and, as it were, physically—a man exclusively of sea and ships; the sea the only world that counted, and the ships, the test of manliness, of temperament, of courage and fidelity—and of love.
I had an exquisite moment. It was unique also. Jumping up from my seat, I paced up and down my room for a long time. But when I came downstairs I behaved with sufficient composure. Only I couldn’t eat anything at dinner.
Having declared my intention not to drive but to walk down to the quay, I must render the wretched steward justice that he bestirred himself to find me some coolies for the luggage. They departed, carrying all my worldly possessions (except a little money I had in my pocket) slung from a long pole. Captain Giles volunteered to walk down with me.
We followed the sombre, shaded alley across the Esplanade. It was moderately cool there under the trees. Captain Giles remarked, with a sudden laugh: “I know who’s jolly thankful at having seen the last of you.”
I guessed that he meant the steward. The fellow had borne himself to me in a sulkily frightened manner at the last. I expressed my wonder that he should have tried to do me a bad turn for no reason at all.
“Don’t you see that what he wanted was to get rid of our friend Hamilton by dodging him in front of you for that job? That would have removed him for good. See?”
“Heavens!” I exclaimed, feeling humiliated somehow. “Can it be possible? What a fool he must be! That overbearing, impudent loafer! Why! He couldn’t. . . . And yet he’s nearly done it, I believe; for the harbour office was bound to send somebody.”
“Aye. A fool like our steward can be dangerous sometimes,” declared Captain Giles sententiously. “Just because he is a fool,” he added, imparting further instruction in his complacent low tones. “For,” he continued in the manner of a set demonstration, “no sensible person would risk being kicked out of the only berth between himself and starvation just to get rid of a simple annoyance—a small worry. Would he now?”
“Well, no,” I conceded, restraining a desire to laugh at that something mysteriously earnest in delivering the conclusions of his wisdom as though it were the product of prohibited operations. “But that fellow looks as if he were rather crazy. He must be.”
“As to that, I believe everybody in the world is a little mad,” he announced quietly.
“You make no exceptions?” I inquired, just to hear his manner.
“Why! Kent says that even of you.”
“Does he?” I retorted, extremely embittered all at once against my former captain. “There’s nothing of that in the written character from him which I’ve got in my pocket. Has he given you any instances of my lunacy?”
Captain Giles explained in a conciliating tone that it had been only a friendly remark in reference to my abrupt leaving the ship for no apparent reason.
I muttered grumpily: “Oh! leaving his ship,” and mended my pace. He kept up by my side in the deep gloom of the avenue as if it were his conscientious duty to see me out of the colony as an undesirable character. He panted a little, which was rather pathetic in a way. But I was not moved. On the contrary. His discomfort gave me a sort of malicious pleasure.
Presently I relented, slowed down, and said:
“What I really wanted was to get a fresh grip. I felt it was time. Is that so very mad?”
He made no answer. We were issuing from the avenue. On the bridge over the canal a dark, irresolute figure seemed to be awaiting something or somebody.
It was a Malay policeman, barefooted, in his blue uniform. The silver band on his little round cap shone dimly in the light of the street lamp. He peered in our direction timidly.
Before we could come up to him he turned about and walked in front of us in the direction of the jetty. The distance was some hundred yards; and then I found my coolies squatting on their heels. They had kept the pole on their shoulders, and all my worldly goods, still tied to the pole, were resting on the ground between them. As far as the eye could reach along the quay there was not another soul abroad except the police peon, who saluted us.
It seems he had detained the coolies as suspicious characters, and had forbidden them the jetty. But at a sign from me he took off the embargo with alacrity. The two patient fellows, rising together with a faint grunt, trotted off along the planks, and I prepared to take my leave of Captain Giles, who stood there with an air as though his mission were drawing to a close. It could not be denied that he had done it all. And while I hesitated about an appropriate sentence he made himself heard:
“I expect you’ll have your hands pretty full of tangled-up business.”
I asked him what made him think so; and he answered that it was his general experience of the world. Ship a long time away from her port, owners inaccessible by cable, and the only man who could explain matters dead and buried.
“And you yourself new to the business in a way,” he concluded in a sort of unanswerable tone.
“Don’t insist,” I said. “I know it only too well. I only wish you could impart to me some small portion of your experience before I go. As it can’t be done in ten minutes I had better not begin to ask you. There’s that harbour launch waiting for me, too. But I won’t feel really at peace till I have that ship of mine out in the Indian Ocean.”
He remarked casually that from Bangkok to the Indian Ocean was a pretty long step. And this murmur, like a dim flash from a dark lantern, showed me for a moment the broad belt of islands and reefs between that unknown ship, which was mine, and the freedom of the great waters of the globe.
But I felt no apprehension. I was familiar enough with the Archipelago by that time. Extreme patience and extreme care would see me through the region of broken land, of faint airs, and of dead water to where I would feel at last my command swing on the great swell and list over to the great breath of regular winds, that would give her the feeling of a large, more intense life. The road would be long. All roads are long that lead toward one’s heart’s desire. But this road my mind’s eye could see on a chart, professionally, with all its complications and difficulties, yet simple enough in a way. One is a seaman or one is not. And I had no doubt of being one.
The only part I was a stranger to was the Gulf of Siam. And I mentioned this to Captain Giles. Not that I was concerned very much. It belonged to the same region the nature of which I knew, into whose very soul I seemed to have looked during the last months of that existence with which I had broken now, suddenly, as one parts with some enchanting company.
“The gulf . . . Ay! A funny piece of water—that,” said Captain Giles.
Funny, in this connection, was a vague word. The whole thing sounded like an opinion uttered by a cautious person mindful of actions for slander.
I didn’t inquire as to the nature of that funniness. There was really no time. But at the very last he volunteered a warning.
“Whatever you do keep to the east side of it. The west side is dangerous at this time of the year. Don’t let anything tempt you over. You’ll find nothing but trouble there.”
Though I could hardly imagine what could tempt me to involve my ship amongst the currents and reefs of the Malay shore, I thanked him for the advice.
He gripped my extended arm warmly, and the end of our acquaintance came suddenly in the words: “Good night.”
That was all he said: “Good night.” Nothing more. I don’t know what I intended to say, but surprise made me swallow it, whatever it was. I choked slightly, and then exclaimed with a sort of nervous haste: ?
??Oh! Good night, Captain Giles, good night.”
His movements were always deliberate, but his back had receded some distance along the deserted quay before I collected myself enough to follow his example and made a half turn in the direction of the jetty.
Only my movements were not deliberate. I hurried down to the steps, and leaped into the launch. Before I had fairly landed in her stern sheets the slim little craft darted away from the jetty with a sudden swirl of her propeller and the hard, rapid puffing of the exhaust in her vaguely gleaming brass funnel amidships.
The misty churning at her stern was the only sound in the world. The shore lay plunged in the silence of the deeper slumber. I watched the town recede still and soundless in the hot night, till the abrupt hail, “Steam-launch, ahoy!” made me spin round face forward. We were close to a white ghostly steamer. Lights shone on her decks, in her portholes. And the same voice shouted from her:
“Is that our passenger?”
“It is,” I yelled.
Her crew had been obviously on the jump. I could hear them running about. The modern spirit of haste was loudly vocal in the orders to “Heave away on the cable”—to “Lower the side ladder,” and in urgent requests to me to “Come along, sir! We have been delayed three hours for you. . . . Our time is seven o’clock, you know!”
I stepped on the deck. I said “No! I don’t know.” The spirit of modern hurry was embodied in a thin, long-armed, long-legged man, with a closely clipped gray beard. His meagre hand was hot and dry. He declared feverishly:
“I am hanged if I would have waited another five minutes harbour master or no harbour master.”
“That’s your own business,” I said. “I didn’t ask you to wait for me.”
“I hope you don’t expect any supper,” he burst out. “This isn’t a boardinghouse afloat. You are the first passenger I ever had in my life and I hope to goodness you will be the last.”
I made no answer to this hospitable communication; and, indeed, he didn’t wait for any, bolting away on to his bridge to get his ship under way.