Section 4

The nigger stared like a man addressed unexpectedly in a foreign language. Donkin changed his tone: — “Giv’ us a bit of ’baccy, mate,” he breathed out con¬ fidentially, “I ’aven’t ’ad smoke or chew for the last month. I am rampin’ mad for it. Come on, old man ! ”
“Don’t be familiar,” said the nigger. Donkin started and sat down on a chest near by, out of sheer surprise. “We haven’t kept pigs together,” continued James Wait in a deep undertone. “Here’s your to¬ bacco.” Then, after a pause, he inquired: — “What ship?” — “ Golden State,” muttered Donkin indistinctly, biting the tobacco. The nigger whistled low. — “Ran?” he said curtly. Donkin nodded: one of his cheeks bulged out. “In course I ran,” he mumbled. “They booted the life hout of one Dago chap on the passage ’ere, then started on me. I cleared hout ’ere. — “Left your dunnage behind?” — “Yes, dunnage and money,” answered Donkin, raising his voice a little; “I got nothink. No clothes, no bed. A bandy-legged little Hirish chap ’ere ’as give me a blanket. . . *
Think I’ll go an’ sleep in the fore topmast staysail to-night.”
He went on deck trailing behind his back a corner of the blanket. Singleton, without a glance, moved slightly aside to let him pass. The nigger put away his shore togs and sat in clean working clothes on his box.
24 THE NIGGER OF THE “NARCISSUS”
one arm stretched over his knees. After staring at Singleton for some time he asked without emphasis: — “What kind of ship is this? Pretty fair? Eh?”
Singleton didn’t stir. A long while after he said, with unmoved face: — “Ship! . . . Ships are all
right. It is the men in them!”
He went on smoking in the profound silence. The wisdom of half a century spent in listening to the thunder of the waves had spoken unconsciously through his old lips. The cat purred on the windlass. Then James Wait had a fit of roaring, rattling cough, that shook him, tossed him like a hurricane, and flung him panting with staring eyes headlong on his sea-chest. Several men woke up. One said sleepily out of his bunk: “’Struth! what a blamed row!” — “I have a cold on my chest,” gasped Wait. — “ Cold ! you call it,” grumbled the man; “should think ’twas something more. . . . ” — “Oh! you think so,” said the
nigger upright and loftily scornful again. He climbed into his berth and began coughing persistently while he put his head out to glare all round the forecastle. There was no further protest. He fell back on the pillow, and could be heard there wheezing regularly like a man oppressed in his sleep.
Singleton stood at the door with his face to the light and his back to the darkness. And alone in the dim emptiness of the sleeping forecastle he appeared bigger, colossal, very old; old as Father Time himself, who should have come there into this place as quiet as a sepulchre to contemplate with patient eyes the short victory of sleep, the consoler. Yet he was only a child of time, a lonely relic of a devoured and forgotten generation. He stood, still strong, as ever unthinking; a ready man with a vast empty past and with no future, with his childlike impulses and his man’s passions
THE NIGGER OF THE “NARCISSUS” 25
already dead within his tattooed breast. The men who could understand his silence were gone — those men who knew how to exist beyond the pale of life and within sight of eternity. They had been strong, as those are strong who know neither doubts nor hopes. They had been impatient and enduring, turbulent and devoted, unruly and faithful. Well-meaning people had tried to represent those men as whining over every mouthful of their food; as going about their work in fear of their lives. But in truth they had been men who knew toil, privation, violence, debauchery — but knew not fear, and had no desire of spite in their hearts. Men hard to manage, but easy to inspire; voiceless men — but men enough to scorn in their hearts the sentimental voices that bewailed the hardness of their fate. It was a fate unique and their own; the capacity to bear it appeared to them the privilege of the chosen! Their generation lived inarticulate and indispensable, without knowing the sweetness of affections or the refuge of a home — and died free from the dark menace of a narrow grave. They were the everlasting children of the mysterious sea. Their successors are the grown-up children of a discontented earth. They are less naughty, but less innocent; less profane, but perhaps also less believing; and if they nave learned how to speak they have also learned how whine. But the others were strong and mute; they were effaced, bowed and enduring, like stone caryat¬ ides that hold up in the night the lighted halls of a resplendent and glorious edifice. They are gone now — and it does not matter. The sea and the earth are unfaithful to their children: a truth, a faith, a gen¬ eration of men goes — and is forgotten, and it does not matter! Except, perhaps, to the few of those who be¬ lieved the truth, confessed the faith — or loved the men-
eo THE NIGGER OF THE “NARCISSUS”
A breeze was coming. The ship that had been lying tide-rode swung to a heavier puff; and suddenly the slack of the chain cable between the windlass and the hawse-pipe clinked, slipped forward an inch, and rose gently off the deck with a startling suggestion as of unsuspected life that had been lurking stealthily in the iron. In the hawse-pipe the grinding links sent through the ship a sound like a low groan of a man sighing under a burden. The strain came on the wind¬ lass, the chain tautened like a string, vibrated — and the handle of the screw-brake moved in slight jerks. Singleton stepped forward.
Till then he had been standing meditative and un¬ thinking, reposeful and hopeless, with a face grim and blank — a sixty-year-old child of the mysterious sea. ^The thoughts of all his lifetime could have been ex¬ pressed in six words, but the stir of those things that were as much part of his existence as his beating heart called up a gleam of alert understanding upon the stern¬ ness of his aged face. The flame of the lamp swayed, and the old man, with knitted and bushy eyebrows, stood over the brake, watchful and motionless in the wild saraband of dancing shadows. Then the ship, obedient to the call of her anchor, forged ahead slightly and eased the strain. The cable relieved, hung down, and after swaying imperceptibly to and fro dropped with a loud tap on the hard wood planks. Singleton seized the high lever, and, by a violent throw forward of his body, wrung out another half-turn from the brake. He recovered himself, breathed largely, and remained for a while glaring down at the powerful and compact engine that squatted on the deck at his feet like some quiet monster — a creature amazing and tame.
“You . . . hold!” he growled at it master¬
fully, in the incult tangle of his white beard.
CHAPTER TWO
Next morning, at daylight, the Narcissus went to sea.
A slight haze blurred the horizon. Outside the harbour the measureless expanse of smooth water lay sparkling like a floor of jewels, and as empty as the sky. The short black tug gave a pluck to windward, in the usual way, then let go the rope, and hovered for a moment on the quarter with her engines stopped; while the slim, long hull of the ship moved ahead slowly under lower topsails. The loose upper canvas blew out in the breeze with soft round contours, resembling small white clouds snared in the maze of ropes. Then the sheets were hauled home, the yards hoisted, and the ship became a high and lonely pyramid, gliding, all shining and white, through the sunlit mist. The tug turned short round and went away towards the land. Twenty-six pairs of eyes watched her low broad stem crawling languidly over the smooth swell between the two paddle-wheels that turned fast, beating the water with fierce hurry. She resembled an enormous and aquatic black beetle, surprised by the light, over¬ whelmed by the sunshine, trying to escape with inef¬ fectual effort into the distant gloom of the land. She left a lingering smudge of smoke on the sky, and two vanishing trails of foam on the water. On the place where she had stopped a round black patch of soot remained, undulating on the swell — an unclean mark of the creature’s rest.
The Narcissus left alone, heading south, seemed to
27
28 THE NIGGER OF THE “NARCISSUS”
stand resplendent and still upon the restless sea, under the moving sun. Flakes of foam swept past her sides; the water struck her with flashing blows; the land glided away slowly fading; a few birds screamed on motionless wings over the swaying mastheads. But soon the land disappeared, the birds went away; and to the west the pointed sail of an Arab dhow running for Bombay, rose triangular and upright above the sharp edge of the horizon, lingered and vanished like an illusion. Then the ship’s wake, long and straight, stretched itself out through a day of immense solitude. The setting sun, burning on the level of the water, flamed crimson below the blackness of heavy rain clouds. The sunset squall, coming up from behind, dissolved itself into the short deluge of a hissing shower. It left the ship glistening from trucks to water¬ line, and with darkened sails. She ran easily before a fair monsoon, with her decks cleared for the night; and, moving along with her, was heard the sustained and monotonous swishing of the waves, mingled with the low whispers of men mustered aft for the setting of watches; the short plaint of some block aloft; or, now and then, a loud sigh of wind.
Mr. Baker, coming out of his cabin, called out the first name sharply before closing the door behind him. He was going to take charge of the deck. On the homeward trip, according to an old custom of the sea, the chief officer takes the first night-watch — from eight till midnight. So Mr. Baker, after he had heard the last “Yes, sir!” said moodily, “Relieve the wheel and look-out”; and climbed with heavy feet the poop ladder to windward. Soon after Mr. Creighton came down, whistling softly, and went into the cabin. On the doorstep the steward lounged, in slippers, meditative, and with his shirt-sleeves rolled up to the armpits.
THE NIGGER OF THE “NARCISSUS” 29
On the main deck the cook, locking up the galley doors, had an altercation with young Charley about a pair of socks. He could be heard saying impressively, in the darkness amidships: “You don’t deserve a kind¬ ness. I’ve been drying them for you, and now you complain about the holes — and you swear, too! Right in front of me! If I hadn’t been a Christian — which you ain’t, you young ruffian — I would give you a clout on the head. . . . Go away!” Men in couples
or threes stood pensive or moved silently along the bul¬ warks in the waist. The first busy day of a home¬ ward passage was sinking into the dull peace of resumed routine. Aft, on the high poop, Mr. Baker walked shuf¬ fling and grunted to himself in the pauses of his thoughts. Forward, the look-out man, erect between the flukes of the two anchors, hummed an endless tune, keeping his eyes fixed dutifully ahead in a vacant stare. A multi¬ tude of stars coming out into the clear night peopled the emptiness of the sky. They glittered, as if alive above the sea; they surrounded the running ship on all sides; more intense than the eyes of a staring crowd, and as inscrutable as the souls of men.
The passage had begun, and the ship, a fragment detached from the earth, went on lonely and swift like a small planet. Round her the abysses of sky and sea met in an unattainable frontier. A great circular solitude moved with her, ever changing and ever the same, always monotonous and always impos¬ ing. Now and then another wandering white speck, burdened with life, appeared far off — disappeared; intent on its own destiny. The sun looked upon her all day, and every morning rose with a burning, round stare of undying curiosity. She had her own future; she was alive with the lives of those beings who trod her decks; like that earth which had given her up to the
30 THE NIGGER OF THE “NARCISSUS”
sea, she had an intolerable load of regrets and hopes. On her lived timid truth and audacious lies; and, like the earth, she was unconscious, fair to see — and con¬ demned by men to an ignoble fate. The august lone¬ liness of her path lent dignity to the sordid inspiration of her pilgrimage. She drove foaming to the southward, as if guided by the courage of a high endeavour. The smiling greatness of the sea dwarfed the extent of time. The days raced after one another, brilliant and quick like the flashes of a lighthouse, and the nights, eventful and short, resembled fleeting dreams.
The men had shaken into their places, and the half- hourly voice of the bells ruled their life of unceasing care. Night and day the head and shoulders of a sea¬ man could be seen aft by the wheel, outlined high against sunshine or starlight, very steady above the stir of revolving spokes. The faces changed, passing in rotation. Youthful faces, bearded faces, dark faces: faces serene, or faces moody, but all akin with the brotherhood of the sea; all with the same attentive expression of eyes, carefully watching the compass or the sails. Captain Allistoun, serious, and wTith an old ved muffler round his throat, all day long pervaded the poop. At night, many times he rose out of the dark¬ ness of the companion, such as a phantom above a grave, and stood watchful and mute under the stars, his night-shirt fluttering like a flag— then, without a sound, sank down again. He was born on the shores of the Pentland Firth. In his youth he attained the rank of harpooner in Peterhead whalers. When he spoke of that time his restless grey eyes became still and cold, like the loom of ice. Afterwards he went into the East Indian trade for the sake of change. He had commanded the N arcissus since she was built. He loved his ship, and drove her unmercifully; for his
THE NIGGER OF THE “NARCISSUS” 31
secret ambition was to make her accomplish some day a brilliantly quick passage which would be mentioned in nautical papers. He pronounced his owner’s name with a sardonic smile, spoke but seldom to his officers, and reproved errors in a gentle voice, with words that cut to the quick. His hair was iron-grey, his face hard and of the colour of pump-leather. He shaved every morning of his life — at six — but once (being caught in a fierce hurricane eighty miles southwest of Mauritius) he had missed three consecutive days. He feared naught but an unforgiving God, and wished to end his days in a little house, with a plot of ground attached — far in the country — out of sight of the sea.
He, the ruler of that minute world, seldom de¬ scended from the Olympian heights of his poop. Below him — at. his feet, so to speak — common mortals led their busy and insignificant lives. Along the main deck, Mr. Baker grunted in a manner bloodthirsty and innocuous; and kept all our noses to the grind¬ stone, being — as he once remarked — paid for doing that very thing. The men working about the deck were healthy and contented — as most seamen are, when once well out to sea. The true peace of God begins at any spot a thousand miles from the nearest land ; and when He sends there the messengers of His might it is not in terrible wrath against crime, presumption, and folly, but paternally, to chasten simple hearts — ignor¬ ant hearts that know nothing of life, and beat undis¬ turbed by envy or greed.
In the evening the cleared decks had a reposeful aspect, resembling the autumn of the earth. The sun was sinking to rest, wrapped in a mantle of warm clouds. Forward, on the end of the spare spars, the boatswain and the carpenter sat together with crossed
32 THE NIGGER OF THE “NARCISSUS”
arms; two men friendly, powerful, and deep-chested. Beside them the short, dumpy sailmaker — who had been in the Navy — related, between the wdiiffs of his pipe, impossible stories about Admirals. Couples tramped backwards and forwards, keeping step and balance without effort, in a confined space. Pigs grunted in the big pigstye. Belfast, leaning thought¬ fully on his elbow, above the bars, communed with them through the silence of his meditation. Fellows with shirts open wide on sunburnt breasts sat upon the mooring bits, and all up the steps of the forecastle ladders. By the foremast a few discussed in a circle the characteristics of a gentleman. One said: — “It’s money as does it.” Another maintained: — “No, it’s the way they speak.” Lame Knowles stumped up with an unwashed face (he had the distinction of being the dirty man of the forecastle), and showing a few yellow fangs in a shrewd smile, explained craftily that he “had seen some of their pants.” The backsides of them — he had observed — were thinner than paper from con¬ stant sitting down in offices, yet otherwise they looked first-rate and would last for years. It was all appear¬ ance. “It was,” he said, “bloomin’ easy to be a gentle¬ man when you had a clean job for life.” They disputed endlessly, obstinate and childish; they repeated in shouts and with inflamed faces their amazing argu¬ ments; while the soft breeze, eddying dowrn the enor¬ mous cavity of the foresail, distended above their bare heads, stirred the tumbled hair with a touch passing and light like an indulgent caress.