Silly to wait there. He was an intruder. Whatever place there was for him in the world it was not that room. He went outside. Mr. Sinclair hurried past him on deck. “One moment, please.” He advised the chief officer what he had done with his charge, and that the contents of the parcel were eminently precious and delicate. Mr. Sinclair darted back to the alleyway without a word. “Steward!” he bawled. The man in the white jacket was there at once. “Parcel in the captain’s room. Too good to be touched. Don’t touch it. See?”
Then he turned to Colet, and his question was in his glance. “Anything more to say? I’m busy.” Jimmy explained that he would not wait for the captain. He must go now.
“What?” ejaculated the sailor. “I thought you were a passenger or the ship’s agent. Why didn’t you speak? The launch has gone. The pilot’s aboard. I’ve just had a telegram to say Captain Hale joins us at Plymouth. You’ll have to go on to Gravesend now.” He spoke as though it would not matter to him if Jimmy went farther still.
Jimmy made a little protest.
“There it is. I can’t stop. I’m wanted above,” Mr. Sinclair strode away.
The Altair was far from the shore. There was some inexplicable activity, and directing shouts. The ship began to tremble, and gave a warning bellow. She was under way. Jimmy half-wished he was going with her; a foolish wish; he did not even know where she was bound.
IX
The Altair went down on the first of the ebb at half-speed. Colet had not seen those shores since he came up this very reach more years ago than he could accurately count. It does not heighten the present morning light to count years you seem to have lost. But it was twilight, he knew, when he was there last. Not much use peering backwards to discern what has lapsed into an old twilight. All the people who were with him then were shades in a lost year. He could not recognise them. There was a vague woman in a pale dress beside him, whose face he could not see now, but he could feel her consoling fingers rumpling his hair. Here it all was. And an old man stood up there, who, somehow, accorded with the dark and the sound of the warning river. He remembered how the grave murmuring stirred him, while all was still. Who was that old fellow? His dim tall figure was still there. But nobody knew his name. He could hear only Mr. Sinclair’s voice. No doubt about that. We live a dual existence. The people who talk to us in the present are unaware that we are not altogether with them. He was making two voyages now. If that chief officer were asked, he would give an emphatic opinion, which everybody would see was obviously right; but the truth isn’t as easy as that.
He paced the deck, and watched two landscapes unfold, one in an evening without a date, and another that their pilot was watching. He felt that the actual was of less potency, in spite of the spring sun, than the obscure land from which the sun had gone, where the people were so merged in a fading year that nothing of them remained but a gesture of affection and an absurdly solemn premonition about something he didn’t know. It looked as if the doctor who talked at breakfast was right. There is no chart for what is of enduring importance to us, and nobody talks of what is of most importance to us. Infinity cannot be charted. There are only private symbols, but they affect us more than the loud fussiness of the day. Perhaps, in a time not yet, even that aggressive officer on the Altair’s bridge would appear to be shadowy and significant to him. In what way? Mr. Sinclair’s voice could be heard again. He was addressing somebody in the bows, and his voice was like a gun’s. Jimmy saw some fun in that probability. It would not be easy to make an august memory of that redheaded man.
Something was happening. Of course, here was Gravesend. They had anchored. The day was still early. It would be easy to get back. The fellow in the white jacket approached him. “Mr. Sinclair would like to see you, sir. He’s in the chart-room.”
Jimmy went up. Sinclair held out his hand with an embarrassed smile. “I don’t know your name. You’ll excuse me if I’ve seemed inattentive. I’ve been rushed. The pilot will be leaving in ten minutes. He’s talking to the chief engineer. You can push off with him.”
He was assured that all was well. “Have you got an interesting voyage in front of you?”
“I haven’t. I’d stay ashore if I could. I’ve been in this old thing too long. Four years and two sets of owners. It’s time for a change, but she was turned round again so quickly this voyage that I didn’t get a chance to do anything about it.”
Mr. Sinclair now seemed slow and sad. He was opening and closing a pair of dividers. “Look here, I’m sorry I was so busy when you boarded us. No time for a drink, and all that. Things have gone in jumps the last day or two, and I never knew which way they’d jump. The owners, you know. The blessed owners. But perhaps you don’t know ’em. The present owners are worse than the last, and old Perriam was bad enough.”
“What!” muttered Jimmy, suddenly shocked; “did he own her?”
“Under another name. Did you know him?”
“Yes. I worked for him. I was in his office.”
Mr. Sinclair
