Chance

a sound, and only here and there a figure, coming up on the forecastle, leaned on the rail to watch the proceedings idly. Without trouble and fuss and almost without a sound was the Ferndale leaving the land, as if stealing away. Even the tugs, now with their engines stopped, were approaching her without a ripple, the burly-looking paddle-boat sheering forward, while the other, a screw, smaller and of slender shape, made for her quarter so gently that she did not divide the smooth water, but seemed to glide on its surface as if on a sheet of plate-glass, a man in her bow, the master at the wheel visible only from the waist upwards above the white screen of the bridge, both of them so still-eyed as to fascinate young Powell into curious self-forgetfulness and immobility. He was steeped, sunk in the general quietness, remembering the statement ‘she’s a lady that mustn’t be disturbed,’ and repeating to himself idly: ‘No. She won’t be disturbed. She won’t be disturbed.’ Then the first loud words of that morning breaking that strange hush of departure with a sharp hail: ‘Look out for that line there,’ made him start. The line whizzed past his head, one of the sailors aft caught it, and there was an end to the fascination, to the quietness of spirit which had stolen on him at the very moment of departure. From that moment till two hours afterwards, when the ship was brought up in one of the lower reaches of the Thames off an apparently uninhabited shore, near some sort of inlet where nothing but two anchored barges flying a red flag could be seen, Powell was too busy to think of the lady ‘that mustn’t be disturbed,’ or of his captain⁠—or of anything else unconnected with his immediate duties. In fact, he had no occasion to go on the poop, or even look that way much; but while the ship was about to anchor, casting his eyes in that direction, he received an absurd impression that his captain (he was up there, of course) was sitting on both sides of the aftermost skylight at once. He was too occupied to reflect on this curious delusion, this phenomenon of seeing double as though he had had a drop too much. He only smiled at himself.

“As often happens after a grey daybreak the sun had risen in a warm and glorious splendour above the smooth immense gleam of the enlarged estuary. Wisps of mist floated like trails of luminous dust, and in the dazzling reflections of water and vapour, the shores had the murky semitransparent darkness of shadows cast mysteriously from below. Powell, who had sailed out of London all his young seaman’s life, told me that it was then, in a moment of entranced vision an hour or so after sunrise, that the river was revealed to him for all time, like a fair face often seen before, which is suddenly perceived to be the expression of an inner and unsuspected beauty, of that something unique and only its own which rouses a passion of wonder and fidelity and an unappeasable memory of its charm. The hull of the Ferndale, swung head to the eastward, caught the light, her tall spars and rigging steeped in a bath of red-gold, from the waterline full of glitter to the trucks slight and gleaming against the delicate expanse of the blue.

“ ‘Time we had a mouthful to eat,’ said a voice at his side. It was Mr. Franklin, the chief mate, with his head sunk between his shoulders, and melancholy eyes. ‘Let the men have their breakfast, bo’sun,’ he went on, ‘and have the fire out in the galley in half an hour at the latest, so that we can call these barges of explosives alongside. Come along, young man. I don’t know your name. Haven’t seen the captain, to speak to, since yesterday afternoon when he rushed off to pick up a second mate somewhere. How did he get you?’

“Young Powell, a little shy notwithstanding the friendly disposition of the other, answered him smilingly, aware somehow that there was something marked in this inquisitiveness, natural, after all⁠—something anxious. His name was Powell, and he was put in the way of this berth by Mr. Powell, the shipping master. He blushed.

“ ‘Ah, I see. Well, you have been smart in getting ready. The ship-keeper, before he went away, told me you joined at one o’clock. I didn’t sleep on board last night. Not I. There was a time when I never cared to leave this ship for more than a couple of hours in the evening, even while in London, but now, since⁠—’

“He checked himself with a roll of his prominent eyes towards that youngster, that stranger. Meantime, he was leading the way across the quarterdeck under the poop into the long passage with the door of the saloon at the far end. It was shut. But Mr. Franklin did not go so far. After passing the pantry he opened suddenly a door on the left of the passage, to Powell’s great surprise.

“ ‘Our mess-room,’ he said, entering a small cabin painted white, bare, lighted from part of the foremost skylight, and furnished only with a table and two settees with movable backs. ‘That surprises you? Well, it isn’t usual. And it wasn’t so in this ship either, before. It’s only since⁠—’

“He checked himself again. ‘Yes. Here we shall feed, you and I, facing each other for the next twelve months or more⁠—God knows how much more! The bo’sun keeps the deck at mealtimes in fine weather.’

“He talked not exactly wheezing, but like a man whose breath is somewhat short, and the spirit (young Powell could not help thinking) embittered by some mysterious grievance.

“There was enough of the unusual there to be recognized even by Powell’s inexperience. The officers kept out of the cabin against the custom of the service, and then this sort of accent in the mate’s talk. Franklin