Section 5

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 com- monplace 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, judg- ing by the temperature of my face, I had blushed as if for a bad action. Assuming a detached tone, I won-
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dered 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 that 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 in- different. He explained that he had found the Steward lying face downwards on the horsehair sofa. He was all right now.
“He would not have died of fright,” I said con- temptuously.
“No. But he might have taken an overdose out of
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one of those little bottles he keeps in his room,” Captain Giles argued seriously. “The confounded fool has tried to poison himself once—a couple of 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, Cap- tain 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 build- ing. 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 aston-
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ishment. 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 pump- kin 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. Buta 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 princess. 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 and 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 along time. But when I came into the dining- room 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
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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
ou.” : 4 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 some- how. “Can it be possible? What a fool he must be! That overbearing, impudent loafer! Why! He
couldnt . . . And yet he’s nearly done it, I believe; for the Harbour Office was bound to send some- body.”
“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 they were the
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- 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 answer.
He kept silent for a little while, then got home in an effective 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 dis- comfort 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
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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 him- self 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 Bankok to the
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Indian Ocean was a pretty long step. And this mur- mur, 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 towards 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 cau- tious 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
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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 sur- prise 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 be- fore 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 J 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 deepest 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 for- ward. We were close to a white, ghostly steamer. Lights shone on her decks, in her port-holes. And the same voice shouted from her: “Is that our passenger?”
“Tt is,” I yelled.
Her crew had been obviously on the jump. I could hear them running about. The modern spirit of haste
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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 de- layed 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 grey 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 boarding-house 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.
For the four days he had me on board he did not de- part from that half-hostile attitude. His ship having been delayed three hours on my account, he couldn’t forgive me for not being a more distinguished person. ' He was not exactly outspoken about it, but that feeling of annoyed wonder was peeping out perpetually in his talk.
He was absurd.
He was also a man of much experience, which he liked to trot out; but no greater contrast with Captain Giles could have been imagined. He would have amused me if I had wanted to be amused. But I did not want to be amused. I was like a lover looking forward to a meeting. Human hostility was nothing to me. J
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thought of my unknown ship. It was amusement enough, torment enough, occupation enough.
He perceived my state, for his wits were sufficiently sharp for that, and he poked sly fun at my preoccupa- tion in the manner some nasty, cynical old men assume towards the dreams and illusions of youth. I, on my side, refrained from questioning him as to the appear- ance of my ship, though I knew that being in Bankok every month or so he must have known her by sight. I