Chance

“It’s all over now,” he whispered back.

He remained bent low, his head inside the cover staring at that white ghostly oval. He wondered she had not rushed out on deck. She had remained quietly there. This was pluck. Wonderful self-restraint. And it was not stupidity on her part. She knew there was imminent danger and probably had some notion of its nature.

“You stayed here waiting for what would come,” he murmured admiringly.

“Wasn’t that the best thing to do?” she asked.

He didn’t know. Perhaps. He confessed he could not have done it. Not he. His flesh and blood could not have stood it. He would have felt he must see what was coming. Then he remembered that the flare might have scorched her face, and expressed his concern.

“A bit. Nothing to hurt. Smell the singed hair?”

There was a sort of gaiety in her tone. She might have been frightened but she certainly was not overcome and suffered from no reaction. This confirmed and augmented if possible Mr Powell’s good opinion of her as a “jolly girl,” though it seemed to him positively monstrous to refer in such terms to one’s captain’s wife. “But she doesn’t look it,” he thought in extenuation and was going to say something more to her about the lighting of that flare when another voice was heard in the companion, saying some indistinct words. Its tone was contemptuous; it came from below, from the bottom of the stairs. It was a voice in the cabin. And the only other voice which could be heard in the main cabin at this time of the evening was the voice of Mrs Anthony’s father. The indistinct white oval sank from Mr Powell’s sight so swiftly as to take him by surprise. For a moment he hung at the opening of the companion and now that her slight form was no longer obstructing the narrow and winding staircase the voices came up louder but the words were still indistinct. The old gentleman was excited about something and Mrs Anthony was “managing him” as Powell expressed it. They moved away from the bottom of the stairs and Powell went away from the companion. Yet he fancied he had heard the words “Lost to me” before he withdrew his head. They had been uttered by Mr Smith.

Captain Anthony had not moved away from the taffrail. He remained in the very position he took up to watch the other ship go by rolling and swinging all shadowy in the uproar of the following seas. He stirred not; and Powell keeping near by did not dare speak to him, so enigmatical in its contemplation of the night did his figure appear to his young eyes: indistinct—and in its immobility staring into gloom, the prey of some incomprehensible grief, longing or regret.

Why is it that the stillness of a human being is often so impressive, so suggestive of evil—as if our proper fate were a ceaseless agitation? The stillness of Captain Anthony became almost intolerable to his second officer. Mr Powell loitering about the skylight wanted his captain off the deck now. “Why doesn’t he go below?” he asked himself impatiently. He ventured a cough.

Whether the effect of the cough or not Captain Anthony spoke. He did not move the least bit. With his back remaining turned to the whole length of the ship he asked Mr Powell with some brusqueness if the chief mate had neglected to instruct him that the captain was to be found on the port side.

“Yes, sir,” said Mr Powell approaching his back. “The mate told me to stamp on the port side when I wanted you; but I didn’t remember at the moment.”

“You should remember,” the captain uttered with an effort. Then added mumbling “I don’t want Mrs Anthony frightened. Don’t you see?”

“She wasn’t this time,” Powell said innocently: “She lighted the flare-up for me, sir.”

“This time,” Captain Anthony exclaimed and turned round. “Mrs Anthony lighted the flare? Mrs Anthony!...” Powell explained that she was in the companion all the time.

“All the time,” repeated the captain. It seemed queer to Powell that instead of going himself to see the captain should ask him:

“Is she there now?” Powell said, that she had gone below after the ship had passed clear of the Ferndale. Captain Anthony made a movement towards the companion himself, when Powell added the information. “Mr Smith called to Mrs Anthony from the saloon, sir. I believe they are talking there now.”

He was surprised to see the captain give up the idea of going below after all.

He began to walk the poop instead regardless of the cold, of the damp wind and of the sprays. And yet he had nothing on but his sleeping suit and slippers. Powell placing himself on the break of the poop kept a look-out. When after some time he turned his head to steal a glance at his eccentric captain he could not see his active and shadowy figure swinging to and fro. The second mate of the Ferndale walked aft peering about and addressed the seaman who steered.

“Captain gone below?”

“Yes, sir,” said the fellow who with a quid of tobacco bulging out his left cheek kept his eyes on the compass card. “This minute. He laughed.”

“Laughed,” repeated Powell incredulously. “Do you mean the captain did? You must be mistaken. What would he want to laugh for?”

“Don’t know, sir.”

The elderly sailor displayed a profound indifference towards human emotions. However, after a longish pause he conceded a few words more to the second officer’s weakness. “Yes. He was walking the deck as usual when suddenly he laughed a little and made for the companion. Thought of something funny all at once.”

Something funny! That Mr Powell could not believe. He did not ask himself why, at the time. Funny thoughts come to men, though, in all sorts of situations; they come to all sorts of men. Nevertheless Mr Powell was shocked to learn that Captain Anthony had laughed without visible cause on a certain night. The impression for some reason was disagreeable. And it was then, while finishing his watch, with the chilly gusts of wind sweeping at him out of the darkness where the short sea of the soundings growled spitefully all round the ship, that it occurred to his unsophisticated mind that perhaps things are not what they are confidently expected to be; that it was possible that Captain Anthony was not a happy man.—In so far you will perceive he was to a certain extent prepared for the apoplectic and sensitive Franklin’s lamentations about his captain. And though he treated them with a contempt which was in a great measure sincere, yet he admitted to me that deep down within him an inexplicable and uneasy suspicion that all was not well in that cabin, so unusually cut off from the rest of the ship, came into being and grew against his will...

Part 2—Chapter 4.