Chance

J >> Joseph Conrad >> Chance


"Mr. Powell dipped his pen and began to turn the leaves of the agreement
over. "We must then take his name off," he says in a kind of unconcerned
sing-song.

"What am I to do?" burst out the skipper. "This office closes at four
o'clock. I can't find a man in half an hour."

"This office closes at four," repeats Mr. Powell glancing up and down the
pages and touching up a letter here and there with perfect indifference.

"Even if I managed to lay hold some time to-day of a man ready to go at
such short notice I couldn't ship him regularly here--could I?"

"Mr. Powell was busy drawing his pen through the entries relating to that
unlucky second mate and making a note in the margin.

"You could sign him on yourself on board," says he without looking up.
"But I don't think you'll find easily an officer for such a pier-head
jump."

"Upon this the fine-looking skipper gave signs of distress. The ship
mustn't miss the next morning's tide. He had to take on board forty tons
of dynamite and a hundred and twenty tons of gunpowder at a place down
the river before proceeding to sea. It was all arranged for next day.
There would be no end of fuss and complications if the ship didn't turn
up in time . . . I couldn't help hearing all this, while wishing him to
take himself off, because I wanted to know why Mr. Powell had told me to
wait. After what he had been saying there didn't seem any object in my
hanging about. If I had had my certificate in my pocket I should have
tried to slip away quietly; but Mr. Powell had turned about into the same
position I found him in at first and was again swinging his leg. My
certificate open on the desk was under his left elbow and I couldn't very
well go up and jerk it away.

"I don't know," says he carelessly, addressing the helpless captain but
looking fixedly at me with an expression as if I hadn't been there. "I
don't know whether I ought to tell you that I know of a disengaged second
mate at hand."

"Do you mean you've got him here?" shouts the other looking all over the
empty public part of the office as if he were ready to fling himself
bodily upon anything resembling a second mate. He had been so full of
his difficulty that I verify believe he had never noticed me. Or perhaps
seeing me inside he may have thought I was some understrapper belonging
to the place. But when Mr. Powell nodded in my direction he became very
quiet and gave me a long stare. Then he stooped to Mr. Powell's ear--I
suppose he imagined he was whispering, but I heard him well enough.

"Looks very respectable."

"Certainly," says the shipping-master quite calm and staring all the time
at me. "His name's Powell."

"Oh, I see!" says the skipper as if struck all of a heap. "But is he
ready to join at once?"

"I had a sort of vision of my lodgings--in the North of London, too,
beyond Dalston, away to the devil--and all my gear scattered about, and
my empty sea-chest somewhere in an outhouse the good people I was staying
with had at the end of their sooty strip of garden. I heard the Shipping
Master say in the coolest sort of way:

"He'll sleep on board to-night."

"He had better," says the Captain of the _Ferndale_ very businesslike, as
if the whole thing were settled. I can't say I was dumb for joy as you
may suppose. It wasn't exactly that. I was more by way of being out of
breath with the quickness of it. It didn't seem possible that this was
happening to me. But the skipper, after he had talked for a while with
Mr. Powell, too low for me to hear became visibly perplexed.

"I suppose he had heard I was freshly passed and without experience as an
officer, because he turned about and looked me over as if I had been
exposed for sale.

"He's young," he mutters. "Looks smart, though . . . You're smart and
willing (this to me very sudden and loud) and all that, aren't you?"

"I just managed to open and shut my mouth, no more, being taken unawares.
But it was enough for him. He made as if I had deafened him with
protestations of my smartness and willingness.

"Of course, of course. All right." And then turning to the Shipping
Master who sat there swinging his leg, he said that he certainly couldn't
go to sea without a second officer. I stood by as if all these things
were happening to some other chap whom I was seeing through with it. Mr.
Powell stared at me with those shining eyes of his. But that bothered
skipper turns upon me again as though he wanted to snap my head off.

"You aren't too big to be told how to do things--are you? You've a lot
to learn yet though you mayn't think so."

"I had half a mind to save my dignity by telling him that if it was my
seamanship he was alluding to I wanted him to understand that a fellow
who had survived being turned inside out for an hour and a half by
Captain R- was equal to any demand his old ship was likely to make on his
competence. However he didn't give me a chance to make that sort of fool
of myself because before I could open my mouth he had gone round on
another tack and was addressing himself affably to Mr. Powell who
swinging his leg never took his eyes off me.

"I'll take your young friend willingly, Mr. Powell. If you let him sign
on as second-mate at once I'll take the Articles away with me now."

"It suddenly dawned upon me that the innocent skipper of the _Ferndale_
had taken it for granted that I was a relative of the Shipping Master! I
was quite astonished at this discovery, though indeed the mistake was
natural enough under the circumstances. What I ought to have admired was
the reticence with which this misunderstanding had been established and
acted upon. But I was too stupid then to admire anything. All my
anxiety was that this should be cleared up. I was ass enough to wonder
exceedingly at Mr. Powell failing to notice the misapprehension. I saw a
slight twitch come and go on his face; but instead of setting right that
mistake the Shipping Master swung round on his stool and addressed me as
'Charles.' He did. And I detected him taking a hasty squint at my
certificate just before, because clearly till he did so he was not sure
of my christian name. "Now then come round in front of the desk,
Charles," says he in a loud voice.

"Charles! At first, I declare to you, it didn't seem possible that he
was addressing himself to me. I even looked round for that Charles but
there was nobody behind me except the thin-necked chap still hard at his
writing, and the other three Shipping Masters who were changing their
coats and reaching for their hats, making ready to go home. It was the
industrious thin-necked man who without laying down his pen lifted with
his left hand a flap near his desk and said kindly:

"Pass this way."

I walked through in a trance, faced Mr. Powell, from whom I learned that
we were bound to Port Elizabeth first, and signed my name on the Articles
of the ship _Ferndale_ as second mate--the voyage not to exceed two
years.

"You won't fail to join--eh?" says the captain anxiously. "It would
cause no end of trouble and expense if you did. You've got a good six
hours to get your gear together, and then you'll have time to snatch a
sleep on board before the crew joins in the morning."

"It was easy enough for him to talk of getting ready in six hours for a
voyage that was not to exceed two years. He hadn't to do that trick
himself, and with his sea-chest locked up in an outhouse the key of which
had been mislaid for a week as I remembered. But neither was I much
concerned. The idea that I was absolutely going to sea at six o'clock
next morning hadn't got quite into my head yet. It had been too sudden.

"Mr. Powell, slipping the Articles into a long envelope, spoke up with a
sort of cold half-laugh without looking at either of us.

"Mind you don't disgrace the name, Charles."

"And the skipper chimes in very kindly:

"He'll do well enough I dare say. I'll look after him a bit."

"Upon this he grabs the Articles, says something about trying to run in
for a minute to see that poor devil in the hospital, and off he goes with
his heavy swinging step after telling me sternly: "Don't you go like that
poor fellow and get yourself run over by a cart as if you hadn't either
eyes or ears."

"Mr. Powell," says I timidly (there was by then only the thin-necked man
left in the office with us and he was already by the door, standing on
one leg to turn the bottom of his trousers up before going away). "Mr.
Powell," says I, "I believe the Captain of the _Ferndale_ was thinking
all the time that I was a relation of yours."

"I was rather concerned about the propriety of it, you know, but Mr.
Powell didn't seem to be in the least.

"Did he?" says he. "That's funny, because it seems to me too that I've
been a sort of good uncle to several of you young fellows lately. Don't
you think so yourself? However, if you don't like it you may put him
right--when you get out to sea." At this I felt a bit queer. Mr. Powell
had rendered me a very good service:- because it's a fact that with us
merchant sailors the first voyage as officer is the real start in life.
He had given me no less than that. I told him warmly that he had done
for me more that day than all my relations put together ever did.

"Oh, no, no," says he. "I guess it's that shipment of explosives waiting
down the river which has done most for you. Forty tons of dynamite have
been your best friend to-day, young man."

"That was true too, perhaps. Anyway I saw clearly enough that I had
nothing to thank myself for. But as I tried to thank him, he checked my
stammering.

"Don't be in a hurry to thank me," says he. "The voyage isn't finished
yet."

Our new acquaintance paused, then added meditatively: "Queer man. As if
it made any difference. Queer man."

"It's certainly unwise to admit any sort of responsibility for our
actions, whose consequences we are never able to foresee," remarked
Marlow by way of assent.

"The consequence of his action was that I got a ship," said the other.
"That could not do much harm," he added with a laugh which argued a
probably unconscious contempt of general ideas.

But Marlow was not put off. He was patient and reflective. He had been
at sea many years and I verily believe he liked sea-life because upon the
whole it is favourable to reflection. I am speaking of the now nearly
vanished sea-life under sail. To those who may be surprised at the
statement I will point out that this life secured for the mind of him who
embraced it the inestimable advantages of solitude and silence. Marlow
had the habit of pursuing general ideas in a peculiar manner, between
jest and earnest.

"Oh, I wouldn't suggest," he said, "that your namesake Mr. Powell, the
Shipping Master, had done you much harm. Such was hardly his intention.
And even if it had been he would not have had the power. He was but a
man, and the incapacity to achieve anything distinctly good or evil is
inherent in our earthly condition. Mediocrity is our mark. And perhaps
it's just as well, since, for the most part, we cannot be certain of the
effect of our actions."

"I don't know about the effect," the other stood up to Marlow manfully.
"What effect did you expect anyhow? I tell you he did something
uncommonly kind."

"He did what he could," Marlow retorted gently, "and on his own showing
that was not a very great deal. I cannot help thinking that there was
some malice in the way he seized the opportunity to serve you. He
managed to make you uncomfortable. You wanted to go to sea, but he
jumped at the chance of accommodating your desire with a vengeance. I am
inclined to think your cheek alarmed him. And this was an excellent
occasion to suppress you altogether. For if you accepted he was relieved
of you with every appearance of humanity, and if you made objections
(after requesting his assistance, mind you) it was open to him to drop
you as a sort of impostor. You might have had to decline that berth for
some very valid reason. From sheer necessity perhaps. The notice was
too uncommonly short. But under the circumstances you'd have covered
yourself with ignominy."

Our new friend knocked the ashes out of his pipe.

"Quite a mistake," he said. "I am not of the declining sort, though I'll
admit it was something like telling a man that you would like a bath and
in consequence being instantly knocked overboard to sink or swim with
your clothes on. However, I didn't feel as if I were in deep water at
first. I left the shipping office quietly and for a time strolled along
the street as easy as if I had a week before me to fit myself out. But
by and by I reflected that the notice was even shorter than it looked.
The afternoon was well advanced; I had some things to get, a lot of small
matters to attend to, one or two persons to see. One of them was an aunt
of mine, my only relation, who quarrelled with poor father as long as he
lived about some silly matter that had neither right nor wrong to it. She
left her money to me when she died. I used always to go and see her for
decency's sake. I had so much to do before night that I didn't know
where to begin. I felt inclined to sit down on the kerb and hold my head
in my hands. It was as if an engine had been started going under my
skull. Finally I sat down in the first cab that came along and it was a
hard matter to keep on sitting there I can tell you, while we rolled up
and down the streets, pulling up here and there, the parcels accumulating
round me and the engine in my head gathering more way every minute. The
composure of the people on the pavements was provoking to a degree, and
as to the people in shops, they were benumbed, more than half
frozen--imbecile. Funny how it affects you to be in a peculiar state of
mind: everybody that does not act up to your excitement seems so
confoundedly unfriendly. And my state of mind what with the hurry, the
worry and a growing exultation was peculiar enough. That engine in my
head went round at its top speed hour after hour till eleven at about at
night it let up on me suddenly at the entrance to the Dock before large
iron gates in a dead wall."

* * * * *

These gates were closed and locked. The cabby, after shooting his things
off the roof of his machine into young Powell's arms, drove away leaving
him alone with his sea-chest, a sail cloth bag and a few parcels on the
pavement about his feet. It was a dark, narrow thoroughfare he told us.
A mean row of houses on the other side looked empty: there wasn't the
smallest gleam of light in them. The white-hot glare of a gin palace a
good way off made the intervening piece of the street pitch black. Some
human shapes appearing mysteriously, as if they had sprung up from the
dark ground, shunned the edge of the faint light thrown down by the
gateway lamps. These figures were wary in their movements and perfectly
silent of foot, like beasts of prey slinking about a camp fire. Powell
gathered up his belongings and hovered over them like a hen over her
brood. A gruffly insinuating voice said:

"Let's carry your things in, Capt'in! I've got my pal 'ere."

He was a tall, bony, grey-haired ruffian with a bulldog jaw, in a torn
cotton shirt and moleskin trousers. The shadow of his hobnailed boots
was enormous and coffinlike. His pal, who didn't come up much higher
than his elbow, stepping forward exhibited a pale face with a long
drooping nose and no chin to speak of. He seemed to have just scrambled
out of a dust-bin in a tam-o'shanter cap and a tattered soldier's coat
much too long for him. Being so deadly white he looked like a horrible
dirty invalid in a ragged dressing gown. The coat flapped open in front
and the rest of his apparel consisted of one brace which crossed his
naked, bony chest, and a pair of trousers. He blinked rapidly as if
dazed by the faint light, while his patron, the old bandit, glowered at
young Powell from under his beetling brow.

"Say the word, Capt'in. The bobby'll let us in all right. 'E knows both
of us."

"I didn't answer him," continued Mr. Powell. "I was listening to
footsteps on the other side of the gate, echoing between the walls of the
warehouses as if in an uninhabited town of very high buildings dark from
basement to roof. You could never have guessed that within a stone's
throw there was an open sheet of water and big ships lying afloat. The
few gas lamps showing up a bit of brick work here and there, appeared in
the blackness like penny dips in a range of cellars--and the solitary
footsteps came on, tramp, tramp. A dock policeman strode into the light
on the other side of the gate, very broad-chested and stern.

"Hallo! What's up here?"

"He was really surprised, but after some palaver he let me in together
with the two loafers carrying my luggage. He grumbled at them however
and slammed the gate violently with a loud clang. I was startled to
discover how many night prowlers had collected in the darkness of the
street in such a short time and without my being aware of it. Directly
we were through they came surging against the bars, silent, like a mob of
ugly spectres. But suddenly, up the street somewhere, perhaps near that
public-house, a row started as if Bedlam had broken loose: shouts, yells,
an awful shrill shriek--and at that noise all these heads vanished from
behind the bars.

"Look at this," marvelled the constable. "It's a wonder to me they
didn't make off with your things while you were waiting."

"I would have taken good care of that," I said defiantly. But the
constable wasn't impressed.

"Much you would have done. The bag going off round one dark corner; the
chest round another. Would you have run two ways at once? And anyhow
you'd have been tripped up and jumped upon before you had run three
yards. I tell you you've had a most extraordinary chance that there
wasn't one of them regular boys about to-night, in the High Street, to
twig your loaded cab go by. Ted here is honest . . . You are on the
honest lay, Ted, ain't you?"

"Always was, orficer," said the big ruffian with feeling. The other
frail creature seemed dumb and only hopped about with the edge of its
soldier coat touching the ground.

"Oh yes, I dare say," said the constable. "Now then, forward, march . . .
He's that because he ain't game for the other thing," he confided to
me. "He hasn't got the nerve for it. However, I ain't going to lose
sight of them two till they go out through the gate. That little chap's
a devil. He's got the nerve for anything, only he hasn't got the muscle.
Well! Well! You've had a chance to get in with a whole skin and with
all your things."

"I was incredulous a little. It seemed impossible that after getting
ready with so much hurry and inconvenience I should have lost my chance
of a start in life from such a cause. I asked:

"Does that sort of thing happen often so near the dock gates?"

"Often! No! Of course not often. But it ain't often either that a man
comes along with a cabload of things to join a ship at this time of
night. I've been in the dock police thirteen years and haven't seen it
done once."

"Meantime we followed my sea-chest which was being carried down a sort of
deep narrow lane, separating two high warehouses, between honest Ted and
his little devil of a pal who had to keep up a trot to the other's
stride. The skirt of his soldier's coat floating behind him nearly swept
the ground so that he seemed to be running on castors. At the corner of
the gloomy passage a rigged jib boom with a dolphin-striker ending in an
arrow-head stuck out of the night close to a cast iron lamp-post. It was
the quay side. They set down their load in the light and honest Ted
asked hoarsely:

"Where's your ship, guv'nor?"

"I didn't know. The constable was interested at my ignorance.

"Don't know where your ship is?" he asked with curiosity. "And you the
second officer! Haven't you been working on board of her?"

"I couldn't explain that the only work connected with my appointment was
the work of chance. I told him briefly that I didn't know her at all. At
this he remarked:

"So I see. Here she is, right before you. That's her."

"At once the head-gear in the gas light inspired me with interest and
respect; the spars were big, the chains and ropes stout and the whole
thing looked powerful and trustworthy. Barely touched by the light her
bows rose faintly alongside the narrow strip of the quay; the rest of her
was a black smudge in the darkness. Here I was face to face with my
start in life. We walked in a body a few steps on a greasy pavement
between her side and the towering wall of a warehouse and I hit my shins
cruelly against the end of the gangway. The constable hailed her quietly
in a bass undertone '_Ferndale_ there!' A feeble and dismal sound,
something in the nature of a buzzing groan, answered from behind the
bulwarks.

"I distinguished vaguely an irregular round knob, of wood, perhaps,
resting on the rail. It did not move in the least; but as another broken-
down buzz like a still fainter echo of the first dismal sound proceeded
from it I concluded it must be the head of the ship-keeper. The stalwart
constable jeered in a mock-official manner.

"Second officer coming to join. Move yourself a bit."

"The truth of the statement touched me in the pit of the stomach (you
know that's the spot where emotion gets home on a man) for it was borne
upon me that really and truly I was nothing but a second officer of a
ship just like any other second officer, to that constable. I was moved
by this solid evidence of my new dignity. Only his tone offended me.
Nevertheless I gave him the tip he was looking for. Thereupon he lost
all interest in me, humorous or otherwise, and walked away driving
sternly before him the honest Ted, who went off grumbling to himself like
a hungry ogre, and his horrible dumb little pal in the soldier's coat,
who, from first to last, never emitted the slightest sound.

"It was very dark on the quarter deck of the _Ferndale_ between the deep
bulwarks overshadowed by the break of the poop and frowned upon by the
front of the warehouse. I plumped down on to my chest near the after
hatch as if my legs had been jerked from under me. I felt suddenly very
tired and languid. The ship-keeper, whom I could hardly make out hung
over the capstan in a fit of weak pitiful coughing. He gasped out very
low 'Oh! dear! Oh! dear!' and struggled for breath so long that I got up
alarmed and irresolute.

"I've been took like this since last Christmas twelvemonth. It ain't
nothing."

"He seemed a hundred years old at least. I never saw him properly
because he was gone ashore and out of sight when I came on deck in the
morning; but he gave me the notion of the feeblest creature that ever
breathed. His voice was thin like the buzzing of a mosquito. As it
would have been cruel to demand assistance from such a shadowy wreck I
went to work myself, dragging my chest along a pitch-black passage under
the poop deck, while he sighed and moaned around me as if my exertions
were more than his weakness could stand. At last as I banged pretty
heavily against the bulkheads he warned me in his faint breathless wheeze
to be more careful.

"What's the matter?" I asked rather roughly, not relishing to be
admonished by this forlorn broken-down ghost.

"Nothing! Nothing, sir," he protested so hastily that he lost his poor
breath again and I felt sorry for him. "Only the captain and his missus
are sleeping on board. She's a lady that mustn't be disturbed. They
came about half-past eight, and we had a permit to have lights in the
cabin till ten to-night."

"This struck me as a considerable piece of news. I had never been in a
ship where the captain had his wife with him. I'd heard fellows say that
captains' wives could work a lot of mischief on board ship if they
happened to take a dislike to anyone; especially the new wives if young
and pretty. The old and experienced wives on the other hand fancied they
knew more about the ship than the skipper himself and had an eye like a
hawk's for what went on. They were like an extra chief mate of a
particularly sharp and unfeeling sort who made his report in the evening.
The best of them were a nuisance. In the general opinion a skipper with
his wife on board was more difficult to please; but whether to show off
his authority before an admiring female or from loving anxiety for her
safety or simply from irritation at her presence--nobody I ever heard on
the subject could tell for certain.

"After I had bundled in my things somehow I struck a match and had a
dazzling glimpse of my berth; then I pitched the roll of my bedding into
the bunk but took no trouble to spread it out. I wasn't sleepy now,
neither was I tired. And the thought that I was done with the earth for
many many months to come made me feel very quiet and self-contained as it
were. Sailors will understand what I mean."

Marlow nodded. "It is a strictly professional feeling," he commented.
"But other professions or trades know nothing of it. It is only this
calling whose primary appeal lies in the suggestion of restless adventure
which holds out that deep sensation to those who embrace it. It is
difficult to define, I admit."