Chance

And again Powell seemed to lose himself in the past. I asked, for suddenly the vision of the Fynes passed through my mind.

“Any children?”

Powell gave a start. “No! No! Never had any children,” and again subsided, puffing at his short briar pipe.

“Where are they now?” I inquired next as if anxious to ascertain that all Fyne’s fears had been misplaced and vain as our fears often are; that there were no undesirable cousins for his dear girls, no danger of intrusion on their spotless home. Powell looked round at me slowly, his pipe smouldering in his hand.

“Don’t you know?” he uttered in a deep voice.

“Know what?”

“That the Ferndale was lost this four years or more. Sunk. Collision. And Captain Anthony went down with her.”

“You don’t say so!” I cried quite affected as if I had known Captain Anthony personally. “Was—was Mrs Anthony lost too?”

“You might as well ask if I was lost,” Mr Powell rejoined so testily as to surprise me. “You see me here,—don’t you.”

He was quite huffy, but noticing my wondering stare he smoothed his ruffled plumes. And in a musing tone.

“Yes. Good men go out as if there was no use for them in the world. It seems as if there were things that, as the Turks say, are written. Or else fate has a try and sometimes misses its mark. You remember that close shave we had of being run down at night, I told you of, my first voyage with them. This go it was just at dawn. A flat calm and a fog thick enough to slice with a knife. Only there were no explosives on board. I was on deck and I remember the cursed, murderous thing looming up alongside and Captain Anthony (we were both on deck) calling out, ‘Good God! What’s this! Shout for all hands, Powell, to save themselves. There’s no dynamite on board now. I am going to get the wife!...’ I yelled, all the watch on deck yelled. Crash!”

Mr Powell gasped at the recollection. “It was a Belgian Green Star liner, the Westland,” he went on, “commanded by one of those stop-for-nothing skippers. Flaherty was his name and I hope he will die without absolution. She cut half through the old Ferndale and after the blow there was a silence like death. Next I heard the captain back on deck shouting, ‘Set your engines slow ahead,’ and a howl of ‘Yes, yes,’ answering him from her forecastle; and then a whole crowd of people up there began making a row in the fog. They were throwing ropes down to us in dozens, I must say. I and the captain fastened one of them under Mrs Anthony’s arms: I remember she had a sort of dim smile on her face.”

“Haul up carefully,” I shouted to the people on the steamer’s deck. “You’ve got a woman on that line.”

The captain saw her landed up there safe. And then we made a rush round our decks to see no one was left behind. As we got back the captain says: “Here she’s gone at last, Powell; the dear old thing! Run down at sea.”

“Indeed she is gone,” I said. “But it might have been worse. Shin up this rope, sir, for God’s sake. I will steady it for you.”

“What are you thinking about,” he says angrily. “It isn’t my turn. Up with you.”

These were the last words he ever spoke on earth I suppose. I knew he meant to be the last to leave his ship, so I swarmed up as quick as I could, and those damned lunatics up there grab at me from above, lug me in, drag me along aft through the row and the riot of the silliest excitement I ever did see. Somebody hails from the bridge, “Have you got them all on board?” and a dozen silly asses start yelling all together, “All saved! All saved,” and then that accursed Irishman on the bridge, with me roaring No! No! till I thought my head would burst, rings his engines astern. He rings the engines astern—I fighting like mad to make myself heard! And of course...

I saw tears, a shower of them fall down Mr Powell’s face. His voice broke.

“The Ferndale went down like a stone and Captain Anthony went down with her, the finest man’s soul that ever left a sailor’s body. I raved like a maniac, like a devil, with a lot of fools crowding round me and asking, ‘Aren’t you the captain?’

“I wasn’t fit to tie the shoe-strings of the man you have drowned,” I screamed at them... Well! Well! I could see for myself that it was no good lowering a boat. You couldn’t have seen her alongside. No use. And only think, Marlow, it was I who had to go and tell Mrs Anthony. They had taken her down below somewhere, first-class saloon. I had to go and tell her! That Flaherty, God forgive him, comes to me as white as a sheet, “I think you are the proper person.” God forgive him. I wished to die a hundred times. A lot of kind ladies, passengers, were chattering excitedly around Mrs Anthony—a real parrot house. The ship’s doctor went before me. He whispers right and left and then there falls a sudden hush. Yes, I wished myself dead. But Mrs Anthony was a brick.

Here Mr Powell fairly burst into tears. “No one could help loving Captain Anthony. I leave you to imagine what he was to her. Yet before the week was out it was she who was helping me to pull myself together.”

“Is Mrs Anthony in England now?” I asked after a while.

He wiped his eyes without any false shame. “Oh yes.” He began to look for matches, and while diving for the box under the table added: “And not very far from here either. That little village up there—you know.”

“No! Really! Oh I see!”

Mr Powell smoked austerely, very detached. But I could not let him off like this. The sly beggar. So this was the secret of his passion for sailing about the river, the reason of his fondness for that creek.

“And I suppose,” I said, “that you are still as ‘enthusiastic’ as ever. Eh? If I were you I would just mention my enthusiasm to Mrs Anthony. Why not?”

He caught his falling pipe neatly. But if what the French call effarement was ever expressed on a human countenance it was on this occasion, testifying to his modesty, his sensibility and his innocence. He looked afraid of somebody overhearing my audacious—almost sacrilegious hint—as if there had not been a mile and a half of lonely marshland and dykes between us and the nearest human habitation. And then perhaps he remembered the soothing fact for he allowed a gleam to light up his eyes, like the reflection of some inward fire tended in the sanctuary of his heart by a devotion as pure as that of any vestal.