THE first thing I saw down there was the upper part of a man's body projecting backward, as it were, from one of the doors at the foot of the stairs.His eyes looked at me very wide and still.In one hand he held a dinner plate, in the other a cloth.
"I am your new Captain," I said quietly.
In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, he had got rid of the plate and the cloth and jumped to open the cabin door.As soon as I passed into the saloon he vanished, but only to reappear instantly, buttoning up a jacket he had put on with the swiftness of a "quick-change" artist.
"Where's the chief mate?" I asked.
"In the hold, I think, sir.I saw him go down the after-hatch ten minutes ago.""Tell him I am on board."
The mahogany table under the skylight shone in the twilight like a dark pool of water.The side-board, surmounted by a wide looking-glass in an ormulu frame, had a marble top.It bore a pair of silver-plated lamps and some other pieces--obviously a harbour display.The saloon itself was panelled in two kinds of wood in the excellent simple taste prevailing when the ship was built.
I sat down in the armchair at the head of the table--the captain's chair, with a small tell-tale compass swung above it--a mute reminder of un-remitting vigilance.
A succession of men had sat in that chair.I be-came aware of that thought suddenly, vividly, as though each had left a little of himself between the four walls of these ornate bulkheads; as if a sort of composite soul, the soul of command, had whispered suddenly to mine of long days at sea and of anxious moments.
"You, too!" it seemed to say, "you, too, shall taste of that peace and that unrest in a searching intimacy with your own self--obscure as we were and as supreme in the face of all the winds and all the seas, in an immensity that receives no impress, preserves no memories, and keeps no reckoning of lives."Deep within the tarnished ormulu frame, in the hot half-light sifted through the awning, I saw my own face propped between my hands.And Istared back at myself with the perfect detachment of distance, rather with curiosity than with any other feeling, except of some sympathy for this latest representative of what for all intents and purposes was a dynasty, continuous not in blood indeed, but in its experience, in its training, in its conception of duty, and in the blessed simplicity of its traditional point of view on life.
It struck me that this quietly staring man whom I was watching, both as if he were myself and some-body else, was not exactly a lonely figure.He had his place in a line of men whom he did not know, of whom he had never heard; but who were fashioned by the same influences, whose souls in relation to their humble life's work had no secrets for him.
Suddenly I perceived that there was another man in the saloon, standing a little on one side and look-ing intently at me.The chief mate.His long, red moustache determined the character of his physiognomy, which struck me as pugnacious in (strange to say) a ghastly sort of way.
How long had he been there looking at me, ap-praising me in my unguarded day-dreaming state?
I would have been more disconcerted if, having the clock set in the top of the mirror-frame right in front of me, I had not noticed that its long hand had hardly moved at all.
I could not have been in that cabin more than two minutes altogether.Say three....So he could not have been watching me more than a mere fraction of a minute, luckily.Still, I re-gretted the occurrence.
But I showed nothing of it as I rose leisurely (it had to be leisurely) and greeted him with perfect friendliness.
There was something reluctant and at the same time attentive in his bearing.His name was Burns.We left the cabin and went round the ship together.His face in the full light of day ap-peared very pale, meagre, even haggard.Some-how I had a delicacy as to looking too often at him;his eyes, on the contrary, remained fairly glued on my face.They were greenish and had an ex-pectant expression.
He answered all my questions readily enough, but my ear seemed to catch a tone of unwillingness.
The second officer, with three or four hands, was busy forward.The mate mentioned his name and I nodded to him in passing.He was very young.
He struck me as rather a cub.
When we returned below, I sat down on one end of a deep, semi-circular, or, rather, semi-oval settee, upholstered in red plush.It extended right across the whole after-end of the cabin.Mr.Burns motioned to sit down, dropped into one of the swivel-chairs round the table, and kept his eyes on me as persistently as ever, and with that strange air as if all this were make-believe and he expected me to get up, burst into a laugh, slap him on the back, and vanish from the cabin.
There was an odd stress in the situation which began to make me uncomfortable.I tried to react against this vague feeling.
"It's only my inexperience," I thought.
In the face of that man, several years, I judged, older than myself, I became aware of what I had left already behind me--my youth.And that was indeed poor comfort.Youth is a fine thing, a mighty power--as long as one does not think of it.I felt I was becoming self-conscious.Almost against my will I assumed a moody gravity.Isaid: "I see you have kept her in very good order, Mr.Burns."Directly I had uttered these words I asked my-self angrily why the deuce did I want to say that?
Mr.Burns in answer had only blinked at me.What on earth did he mean?
I fell back on a question which had been in my thoughts for a long time--the most natural ques-tion on the lips of any seaman whatever joining a ship.I voiced it (confound this self-consciousness)in a degage cheerful tone: "I suppose she can travel --what?"Now a question like this might have been an-swered normally, either in accents of apologetic sorrow or with a visibly suppressed pride, in a "Idon't want to boast, but you shall see," sort of tone.There are sailors, too, who would have been roughly outspoken: "Lazy brute," or openly de-lighted: "She's a flyer." Two ways, if four manners.
