One couldn’t imagine why the Marine Board should keep that bald, fat creature slaving down there. For some reason or other I felt sorry and ashamed to have found him out in his wretched captivity. I asked gently and sorrowfully: ‘The Shipping Office, please.’
“He piped up in a contemptuous squeaky voice which made me start: ‘Not here. Try the passage on the other side. Street side. This is the Dock side. You’ve lost your way...’
“He spoke in such a spiteful tone that I thought he was going to round off with the words: ‘You fool’ ... and perhaps he meant to. But what he finished sharply with was: ‘Shut the door quietly after you.’
“And I did shut it quietly—you bet. Quick and quiet. The indomitable spirit of that chap impressed me. I wonder sometimes whether he has succeeded in writing himself into liberty and a pension at last, or had to go out of his gas-lighted grave straight into that other dark one where nobody would want to intrude. My humanity was pleased to discover he had so much kick left in him, but I was not comforted in the least. It occurred to me that if Mr Powell had the same sort of temper... However, I didn’t give myself time to think and scuttled across the space at the foot of the stairs into the passage where I’d been told to try. And I tried the first door I came to, right away, without any hanging back, because coming loudly from the hall above an amazed and scandalised voice wanted to know what sort of game I was up to down there. ‘Don’t you know there’s no-admittance that way?’ it roared. But if there was anything more I shut it out of my hearing by means of a door marked
“‘I want to see Mr Powell, please,’ I said, very civil but firm; I would let nothing scare me away now. This was the Shipping Office right enough. It was after 3 o’clock and the business seemed over for the day with them. The long-necked fellow went on with his writing steadily. I observed that he was no longer grinning. The three others tossed their heads all together towards the far end of the room where a fifth man had been looking on at their antics from a high stool. I walked up to him as boldly as if he had been the devil himself. With one foot raised up and resting on the cross-bar of his seat he never stopped swinging the other which was well clear of the stone floor. He had unbuttoned the top of his waistcoat and he wore his tall hat very far at the back of his head. He had a full unwrinkled face and such clear-shining eyes that his grey beard looked quite false on him, stuck on for a disguise. You said just now he resembled Socrates—didn’t you? I don’t know about that. This Socrates was a wise man, I believe?”
“He was,” assented Marlow. “And a true friend of youth. He lectured them in a peculiarly exasperating manner. It was a way he had.”
“Then give me Powell every time,” declared our new acquaintance sturdily. “He didn’t lecture me in any way. Not he. He said: ‘How do you do?’ quite kindly to my mumble. Then says he looking very hard at me: ‘I don’t think I know you—do I?’
“‘No, sir,’ I said and down went my heart sliding into my boots, just as the time had come to summon up all my cheek. There’s nothing meaner in the world than a piece of impudence that isn’t carried off well. For fear of appearing shamefaced I started about it so free and easy as almost to frighten myself. He listened for a while looking at my face with surprise and curiosity and then held up his hand. I was glad enough to shut up, I can tell you.
“‘Well, you are a cool hand,’ says he. ‘And that friend of yours too. He pestered me coming here every day for a fortnight till a captain I’m acquainted with was good enough to give him a berth. And no sooner he’s provided for than he turns you on. You youngsters don’t seem to mind whom you get into trouble.’
“It was my turn now to stare with surprise and curiosity. He hadn’t been talking loud but he lowered his voice still more.
“‘Don’t you know it’s illegal?’
“I wondered what he was driving at till I remembered that procuring a berth for a sailor is a penal offence under the Act. That clause was directed of course against the swindling practices of the boarding-house crimps. It had never struck me it would apply to everybody alike no matter what the motive, because I believed then that people on shore did their work with care and foresight.
“I was confounded at the idea, but Mr Powell made me soon see that an Act of Parliament hasn’t any sense of its own. It has only the sense that’s put into it; and that’s precious little sometimes. He didn’t mind helping a young man to a ship now and then, he said, but if we kept on coming constantly it would soon get about that he was doing it for money.
“‘A pretty thing that would be: the Senior Shipping Master of the Port of London hauled up in a police court and fined fifty pounds,’ says he. ‘I’ve another four years to serve to get my pension. It could be made to look very black against me and don’t you make any mistake about it,’ he says.
“And all the time with one knee well up he went on swinging his other leg like a boy on a gate and looking at me very straight with his shining eyes. I was confounded I tell you. It made me sick to hear him imply that somebody would make a report against him.
“‘Oh!’—I asked shocked, ‘who would think of such a scurvy trick, sir?’ I was half disgusted with him for having the mere notion of it.
“‘Who?’ says he, speaking very low. ‘Anybody. One of the office messengers maybe. I’ve risen to be the Senior of this office and we are all very good friends here, but don’t you think that my colleague that sits next to me wouldn’t like to go up to this desk by the window four years in advance of the regulation time? Or even one year for that matter. It’s human nature.’
“I could not help turning my head. The three fellows who had been skylarking when I came in were now talking together very soberly, and the long-necked chap was going on with his writing still. He seemed to me the most dangerous of the lot. I saw him side-face and his lips were set very tight. I had never looked at mankind in that light before. When one’s young human nature shocks one. But what startled me most was to see the door I had come through open slowly and give passage to a head in a uniform cap with a Board of Trade badge. It was that blamed old doorkeeper from the hall. He had run me to earth and meant to dig me out too. He walked up the office smirking craftily, cap in hand.
“‘What is it, Symons?’ asked Mr Powell.
“‘I was only wondering where this ’ere gentleman ’ad gone to, sir. He slipped past me upstairs, sir.’
“I felt mighty uncomfortable.
