Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (417 page)

I asked myself: wasn’t that ill-luck exhausted yet?  Ill-luck which is like the hate of invisible powers interpreted, made sensible and injurious by the actions of men?

Mr. Powell as you may well imagine had opened his eyes at my statement.  But he was full of his recalled experiences on board the Ferndale, and the strangeness of being mixed up in what went on aboard, simply because his name was also the name of a shipping-master, kept him in a state of wonder which made other coincidences, however unlikely, not so very surprising after all.

This astonishing occurrence was so present to his mind that he always felt as though he were there under false pretences.  And this feeling was so uncomfortable that it nerved him to break through the awe-inspiring aloofness of his captain.  He wanted to make a clean breast of it.  I imagine that his youth stood in good stead to Mr. Powell.  Oh, yes.  Youth is a power.  Even Captain Anthony had to take some notice of it, as if it refreshed him to see something untouched, unscarred, unhardened by suffering.  Or perhaps the very novelty of that face, on board a ship where he had seen the same faces for years, attracted his attention.

Whether one day he dropped a word to his new second officer or only looked at him I don’t know; but Mr. Powell seized the opportunity whatever it was.  The captain who had started and stopped in his everlasting rapid walk smoothed his brow very soon, heard him to the end and then laughed a little.

“Ah!  That’s the story.  And you felt you must put me right as to this.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It doesn’t matter how you came on board,” said Anthony.  And then showing that perhaps he was not so utterly absent from his ship as Franklin supposed: “That’s all right.  You seem to be getting on very well with everybody,” he said in his curt hurried tone, as if talking hurt him, and his eyes already straying over the sea as usual.

“Yes, sir.”

Powell tells me that looking then at the strong face to which that haggard expression was returning, he had the impulse, from some confused friendly feeling, to add: “I am very happy on board here, sir.”

The quickly returning glance, its steadiness, abashed Mr. Powell and made him even step back a little.  The captain looked as though he had forgotten the meaning of the word.

“You — what?  Oh yes . . . You . . . of course . . . Happy.  Why not?”

This was merely muttered; and next moment Anthony was off on his headlong tramp his eyes turned to the sea away from his ship.

A sailor indeed looks generally into the great distances, but in Captain Anthony’s case there was — as Powell expressed it — something particular, something purposeful like the avoidance of pain or temptation.  It was very marked once one had become aware of it.  Before, one felt only a pronounced strangeness.  Not that the captain — Powell was careful to explain — didn’t see things as a ship-master should.  The proof of it was that on that very occasion he desired him suddenly after a period of silent pacing, to have all the staysails sheets eased off, and he was going on with some other remarks on the subject of these staysails when Mrs. Anthony followed by her father emerged from the companion.  She established herself in her chair to leeward of the skylight as usual.  Thereupon the captain cut short whatever he was going to say, and in a little while went down below.

I asked Mr. Powell whether the captain and his wife never conversed on deck.  He said no — or at any rate they never exchanged more than a couple of words.  There was some constraint between them.  For instance, on that very occasion, when Mrs. Anthony came out they did look at each other; the captain’s eyes indeed followed her till she sat down; but he did not speak to her; he did not approach her; and afterwards left the deck without turning his head her way after this first silent exchange of glances.

I asked Mr. Powell what did he do then, the captain being out of the way.  “I went over and talked to Mrs. Anthony.  I was thinking that it must be very dull for her.  She seemed to be such a stranger to the ship.”

“The father was there of course?”

“Always,” said Powell.  “He was always there sitting on the skylight, as if he were keeping watch over her.  And I think,” he added, “that he was worrying her.  Not that she showed it in any way.  Mrs. Anthony was always very quiet and always ready to look one straight in the face.”

“You talked together a lot?” I pursued my inquiries.  “She mostly let me talk to her,” confessed Mr. Powell.  “I don’t know that she was very much interested — but still she let me.  She never cut me short.”

All the sympathies of Mr. Powell were for Flora Anthony née de Barral.  She was the only human being younger than himself on board that ship since the Ferndale carried no boys and was manned by a full crew of able seamen.  Yes! their youth had created a sort of bond between them.  Mr. Powell’s open countenance must have appeared to her distinctly pleasing amongst the mature, rough, crabbed or even inimical faces she saw around her.  With the warm generosity of his age young Powell was on her side, as it were, even before he knew that there were sides to be taken on board that ship, and what this taking sides was about.  There was a girl.  A nice girl.  He asked himself no questions.  Flora de Barral was not so much younger in years than himself; but for some reason, perhaps by contrast with the accepted idea of a captain’s wife, he could not regard her otherwise but as an extremely youthful creature.  At the same time, apart from her exalted position, she exercised over him the supremacy a woman’s earlier maturity gives her over a young man of her own age.  As a matter of fact we can see that, without ever having more than a half an hour’s consecutive conversation together, and the distances duly preserved, these two were becoming friends — under the eye of the old man, I suppose.

How he first got in touch with his captain’s wife Powell relates in this way.  It was long before his memorable conversation with the mate and shortly after getting clear of the channel.  It was gloomy weather; dead head wind, blowing quite half a gale; the Ferndale under reduced sail was stretching close-hauled across the track of the homeward bound ships, just moving through the water and no more, since there was no object in pressing her and the weather looked threatening.  About ten o’clock at night he was alone on the poop, in charge, keeping well aft by the weather rail and staring to windward, when amongst the white, breaking seas, under the black sky, he made out the lights of a ship.  He watched them for some time.  She was running dead before the wind of course.  She will pass jolly close — he said to himself; and then suddenly he felt a great mistrust of that approaching ship.  She’s heading straight for us — he thought.  It was not his business to get out of the way.  On the contrary.  And his uneasiness grew by the recollection of the forty tons of dynamite in the body of the Ferndale; not the sort of cargo one thinks of with equanimity in connection with a threatened collision.  He gazed at the two small lights in the dark immensity filled with the angry noise of the seas.  They fascinated him till their plainness to his sight gave him a conviction that there was danger there.  He knew in his mind what to do in the emergency, but very properly he felt that he must call the captain out at once.

He crossed the deck in one bound.  By the immemorial custom and usage of the sea the captain’s room is on the starboard side.  You would just as soon expect your captain to have his nose at the back of his head as to have his state-room on the port side of the ship.  Powell forgot all about the direction on that point given him by the chief.  He flew over as I said, stamped with his foot and then putting his face to the cowl of the big ventilator shouted down there: “Please come on deck, sir,” in a voice which was not trembling or scared but which we may call fairly expressive.  There could not be a mistake as to the urgence of the call.  But instead of the expected alert “All right!” and the sound of a rush down there, he heard only a faint exclamation — then silence.

Think of his astonishment!  He remained there, his ear in the cowl of the ventilator, his eyes fastened on those menacing sidelights dancing on the gusts of wind which swept the angry darkness of the sea.  It was as though he had waited an hour but it was something much less than a minute before he fairly bellowed into the wide tube “Captain Anthony!”  An agitated “What is it?” was what he heard down there in Mrs. Anthony’s voice, light rapid footsteps . . . Why didn’t she try to wake him up!  “I want the captain,” he shouted, then gave it up, making a dash at the companion where a blue light was kept, resolved to act for himself.

On the way he glanced at the helmsman whose face lighted up by the binnacle lamps was calm.  He said rapidly to him: “Stand by to spin that helm up at the first word.”  The answer “Aye, aye, sir,” was delivered in a steady voice.  Then Mr. Powell after a shout for the watch on deck to “lay aft,” ran to the ship’s side and struck the blue light on the rail.

A sort of nasty little spitting of sparks was all that came.  The light (perhaps affected by damp) had failed to ignite.  The time of all these various acts must be counted in seconds.  Powell confessed to me that at this failure he experienced a paralysis of thought, of voice, of limbs.  The unexpectedness of this misfire positively overcame his faculties.  It was the only thing for which his imagination was not prepared.  It was knocked clean over.  When it got up it was with the suggestion that he must do something at once or there would be a broadside smash accompanied by the explosion of dynamite, in which both ships would be blown up and every soul on board of them would vanish off the earth in an enormous flame and uproar.

He saw the catastrophe happening and at the same moment, before he could open his mouth or stir a limb to ward off the vision, a voice very near his ear, the measured voice of Captain Anthony said: “Wouldn’t light — eh?  Throw it down!  Jump for the flare-up.”

The spring of activity in Mr. Powell was released with great force.  He jumped.  The flare-up was kept inside the companion with a box of matches ready to hand.  Almost before he knew he had moved he was diving under the companion slide.  He got hold of the can in the dark and tried to strike a light.  But he had to press the flare-holder to his breast with one arm, his fingers were damp and stiff, his hands trembled a little.  One match broke.  Another went out.  In its flame he saw the colourless face of Mrs. Anthony a little below him, standing on the cabin stairs.  Her eyes which were very close to his (he was in a crouching posture on the top step) seemed to burn darkly in the vanishing light.  On deck the captain’s voice was heard sudden and unexpectedly sardonic: “You had better look sharp, if you want to be in time.”

“Let me have the box,” said Mrs. Anthony in a hurried and familiar whisper which sounded amused as if they had been a couple of children up to some lark behind a wall.  He was glad of the offer which seemed to him very natural, and without ceremony —

“Here you are.  Catch hold.”

Their hands touched in the dark and she took the box while he held the paraffin soaked torch in its iron holder.  He thought of warning her: “Look out for yourself.”  But before he had the time to finish the sentence the flare blazed up violently between them and he saw her throw herself back with an arm across her face.  “Hallo,” he exclaimed; only he could not stop a moment to ask if she was hurt.  He bolted out of the companion straight into his captain who took the flare from him and held it high above his head.

The fierce flame fluttered like a silk flag, throwing an angry swaying glare mingled with moving shadows over the poop, lighting up the concave surfaces of the sails, gleaming on the wet paint of the white rails.  And young Powell turned his eyes to windward with a catch in his breath.

The strange ship, a darker shape in the night, did not seem to be moving onwards but only to grow more distinct right abeam, staring at the Ferndale with one green and one red eye which swayed and tossed as if they belonged to the restless head of some invisible monster ambushed in the night amongst the waves.  A moment, long like eternity, elapsed, and, suddenly, the monster which seemed to take to itself the shape of a mountain shut its green eye without as much as a preparatory wink.

Mr. Powell drew a free breath.  “All right now,” said Captain Anthony in a quiet undertone.  He gave the blazing flare to Powell and walked aft to watch the passing of that menace of destruction coming blindly with its parti-coloured stare out of a blind night on the wings of a sweeping wind.  Her very form could be distinguished now black and elongated amongst the hissing patches of foam bursting along her path.

As is always the case with a ship running before wind and sea she did not seem to an onlooker to move very fast; but to be progressing indolently in long leisurely bounds and pauses in the midst of the overtaking waves.  It was only when actually passing the stern within easy hail of the Ferndale, that her headlong speed became apparent to the eye.  With the red light shut off and soaring like an immense shadow on the crest of a wave she was lost to view in one great, forward swing, melting into the lightless space.

“Close shave,” said Captain Anthony in an indifferent voice just raised enough to be heard in the wind.  “A blind lot on board that ship.  Put out the flare now.”

Silently Mr. Powell inverted the holder, smothering the flame in the can, bringing about by the mere turn of his wrist the fall of darkness upon the poop.  And at the same time vanished out of his mind’s eye the vision of another flame enormous and fierce shooting violently from a white churned patch of the sea, lighting up the very clouds and carrying upwards in its volcanic rush flying spars, corpses, the fragments of two destroyed ships.  It vanished and there was an immense relief.  He told me he did not know how scared he had been, not generally but of that very thing his imagination had conjured, till it was all over.  He measured it (for fear is a great tension) by the feeling of slack weariness which came over him all at once.

He walked to the companion and stooping low to put the flare in its usual place saw in the darkness the motionless pale oval of Mrs. Anthony’s face.  She whispered quietly: