"It was like this," he went on. "Apart from a general dislike of doing things that boys consider 'bad form' my brother had no scruples at all. For instance, if a stranger cheeks you, you feel as if you'd like to hit him. My young brother did hit him. What was still more to his advantage he gave people the impression that he was always ready to jump over the table at them. My impression is that the old Head didn't dare flog him and had been glad to find an excuse to get rid of him. It didn't occur to the old chap that my brother wouldn't come home. He little knew my brother! "Several days passed and we began to get anxious. My mother telegraphed the Head and the railway company. No good. Now it's all very well for well-meaning people to say tell the police,' but when you are up against a private disgrace, you think pretty hard before you walk into a police station. My brother was fifteen and big for his age. Why, he might disguise himself anyhow. The week-end came before we made up our minds that the police would have to be notified. I went to Scotland Yard on the Saturday afternoon with a reward and description. I don't pretend that I felt very anxious about him. He had never sought either my friendship or my protection, and we "'Hullo, Charley!' he says. 'Fancy you here.' "'What are you doing here?' I asked him. I realized he was as tall as I was. 'Why aren't you at home?' "'I'm coming home with you, Charley boy,' he says, looking round at the girls. 'All the old talent here, you see!' "I own frankly I was disgusted. I was so disgusted I never went into that place again. We got the 12.20 at King's Cross and it was a quarter past one in the morning before we arrived at our house. Here was a nice state of things; the elder son finding his fifteen-year-old brother in El Vino, and coming home with the milk. That was my brother's way all along. He made everything I do "The next morning he went on the carpet. My mother gave him a pretty hot talking to. She told him he was a disgrace to the name of Carville, that he'd begun bad and would go to worse. She asked him how she was ever to get him into a position if he left school like that and for such a reason. He took out a cigarette-case and helped himself. 'No need to worry, mater,' says he, 'I've got a position already.' "And so he had! He'd gone into the city and got a position in a big wholesale house as a clerk. Ask me how he did it and all I can say is 'Personality.' He could do anything with anybody. There he was, fifteen, with a guinea a week to start. And I was twenty-two and only getting a few shillings more. "After the first shock my mother resigned herself to the inevitable and hoped for the best. And for a couple of years we managed to rub along without any scandals. In our several ways, my brother and I were busy with life, as far as we knew it. He went up to the city every day, and played football and cricket, but the serious business of his life was girls. He seemed to have hundreds. If I saw him in the Strand, on Saturday, he would be with three or four. If I met him on Hadley Common, on Sunday, he would have three or four there, but fresh ones. He had them in the trains, he lunched with them in the city. Barring the few hours he spent in our house at night he lived chiefly "Apart from these annoyances, I was sliding along a well-oiled groove in life. It generally happens that a young man in such a position as mine marries and settles down for good. Now it may have been that my brother's wholesale dealings with girls threw me to the other extreme. I don't think that had much to do with it. I think, now, that I had a natural bend towards Culture. "Don't misunderstand me," said Mr. Carville. "I use that word without any doubt of what it means. I know George Du Maurier's sneers. Culture means an instinct for the best. I had that. I have it now. "I don't say that culture is opposed to marriage. That would be nonsense. But it may seriously interfere with marriage. A young man in the "My work was, as I said, light. The firm I was with were specialists in certain machinery, and I was assistant to the London manager. I had to plan out and make estimates for various plants, and travel about the south of England getting orders and superintending erection. I can tell you it just suited me, those journeys by train. I always had my book with me, and as soon as I had been over a job, I forgot all about contracts and went back to Pater, or Gibbon or Flaubert or Emerson, whoever I happened to be reading. In the evenings I used to try and imitate what I had read. "But what could I write? What did I know? Nothing! I had never been anywhere, I had never met anybody in particular, I had never been in love. I had never waked up. I was in a sort of trance, surrounded by the traditions of the genteel professional class. Of course, in a dim way I knew that my mother expected me to be something ex "My brother was going his way all this time, when all of a sudden he roused me up again. For a long time he had been earning twenty-five shillings a week and spending forty, and my mother had been making good the deficit. She had just given him a five-pound note to pay for his quarterly season-ticket on the railway. He didn't pay it. Just went on travelling to the city with the old one. Of course, a lot of people had done that trick and the Company were wise to it. My brother was caught and summoned before the Lord Mayor at the Mansion House. You can believe my mother was distressed. It wouldn't have been so bad if he had only held his tongue and let her pay the forty shillings fine and costs. No! he had to give the Lord Mayor a piece of his mind. And that made the evening papers feature the amusing incident, as they call it. "I must admit the boy made out a very good case. He told the Court his father, his brother and himself had been travelling over the line for something like sixteen years. Altogether we had paid the railways two hundred pounds in fares. 'Now,' says he to the Court, 'if I had done two hundred pounds worth of business with a firm, they wouldn't be down on me for being a day or two late with a small account of five pounds, would they? "The first I saw of it was in the papers. I remember feeling sick and giddy all over when I saw our name in the police court news. 'The Seamy Side' they called it. When I got home my brother and my mother were having it out. He didn't care. It was all over for him, he admitted. Better let him start afresh somewhere else. My mother wanted to send him to Canada, where she had relatives, but he said he'd be damned if he went to Canada. He was sick of clerking. What did he want to do? I asked him. He said he was going in for engineering. I smiled at this, and he rounded on me. 'Oh I don't mean your engineering,' he says. 'I mean something that's worth while.' Very sneering he was. "Well, do you know what he did? He got fifty pounds out of my mother to start with and disappeared. That's all. Simply vanished without a word. In a way it was a relief. We gave out that he had gone to Canada and the scandal died down. A month later my uncle wrote and mentioned that "After this little brush-up my mother and I jogged along for a few years as quiet as before. I was still in my job as manager's assistant, and still reading away into the classics. I was about twenty-five when all my ideas and prejudices slid away over side and I found I had got the disease we call love. It nearly killed me." Mr. Carville paused and leaned over to knock his pipe against the geranium-tub. We did not interrogate him. There was something numbing to me in the thought of this quiet ordinary little man telling us in a quiet matter-of-fact tone that love had nearly killed him. We had no comment worthy of the fact. He looked across the valley for a moment as though lost in retrospection. "She came home from a convent in Brussels," he continued, feeling for his little brass box, "and to use the slang of our professional class, her people knew my people. That was the way we talked. If a thing was good, we called it 'ripping.' If it was unpleasant, we said it was 'beastly.' I believe the slang has changed since then, but the silly artificial spirit of it will never change. Why can't educated people speak English? "She came home from a convent in Brussels. Her home was about a mile off, a big house in East Barnet, and she called with her mother one day when I happened to come home from a journey early. She gave me a look.... "You see, she wasn't beautiful. She was well-dressed and well-mannered and she had grey eyes. Beyond that I haven't any distinct memory of what she was like. And the astounding thing to me, when I look back on that business, is the utter lack of any common interests. How could I expect her to take any notice of me? I was a book-worm. I couldn't do any of the social tricks she admired. I knew as much about music as a cow, and considered tennis a bore. And yet I wanted her. I wanted that eighteen-year-old girl as I've never wanted anything since. I made myself a door-mat for her feet, I took her impudence and said nothing, I waited for her and made no complaint when she forgot to keep an appointment. My mother saw it and did her best to help me (though it wasn't much), for she wanted me to get married. This would have been a good match, for it so happened that 'her people' were in a position to advance me in my profession, as I called it. "And strange to say, my persistence did make some impression. I did make some headway. I chucked my books to one side, went in for tennis, and even took girls up the river to Kingston and Bourne End, she being one of them. It made a hole in the little bank account I had started, but I suppose it was worth it. I met a lot of pretty girls; "So it stood, when one day in the autumn, the whole thing capsized. My brother came back. "He didn't come back like any other prodigal I ever heard of. No, he came back in his own way, like a conquering hero, which he was. He came back on an automobile. "You laugh? But you must remember that in those days there weren't fifty automobiles in England. When my brother came up the London Road with a whiz and a bang, a long trail of blue stench coming out of the back of the machine, I really think that was the third or fourth time I had ever seen such a thing. Well, there he was, a great big chap with a hooked nose and flashing black eyes behind the goggles. Where had he been? Neither to Canada nor to New Zealand. He'd been to France. He'd gone there and learned the motor-car business in one of the first shops ever built. Picked it up you may say, as he picked everything up, but he got it none the less. He'd seen the possibilities of the thing, and here he was "He would come down to the tennis club that evening, though I didn't want him. Somehow I dreaded introducing him to Gladys. There was no need for me to worry. He introduced himself. In another five minutes he was talking French with her, and she was screaming with laughter at the stories he told her. He saw her home.... "You can understand that the next day I was in a bad condition for work. And it so happened that I had a job that needed all the concentration I could give it. I don't remember a single detail of it. I had been neglecting my work then, like all young chaps in love, but on this occasion I made a costly mistake. I marked the driving pulley on a line-shaft a foot too small. The aggravating part was I sent it to the head office in Yorkshire without revising it and they got on to my boss. He took the bit in his teeth and went for me. He gave me a week to find another job. I was 'down and out.' "I was paralyzed for a while. I didn't know where to turn. The bottom had dropped out of my world for good and all. Another job! Why, I knew men in that employ who had held their jobs for forty years. "I said nothing about it at home. My brother, with his three hundred a year and his French argot, made home unbearable and I thought of clearing out of it. But where could I go? You see, if you work for some specialist for a number of years, the only job you can move to is a position with another specialist of the same line. And this business I was in was run by about six big firms. "Still, the thought of clearing out held me. I saw that if my brother was going to live at home, I'd have to go. And Saturday came round and found me wondering what to do. "At times I used to go over to my uncle's at Surbiton. It was my duty to pay respects, so to speak. His family had a grudge against my mother, because if my father hadn't married her, they would have inherited his money, so that there was not much love lost between them. But occasionally my old uncle would ring me up and ask me to go down with him. He did this Saturday I speak of, and as there was no one else in my office at the time I told him my trouble. And he laughed! Humph! "The inhuman old shell-back laughed! And yet, if you'll believe me, when I heard the old chap rumbling at the other end of the wire, it cheered me up. I began to think, 'Why, he may have influence. He may get me a job.' You see the vicious state of mind of the professional class! When I mentioned the possibility to him, he said, 'I can get you a job all right. How'd you like to go to sea?' "I nearly dropped the receiver when he said that. "'Eh?' I said. 'What d'you mean?' "'What I said,' he bellows. 'Go to sea,' "'I'll come round and talk to you,' I said. "I went round and found him in the office. He was a fierce old chap, burnt black with sun, and with hair grey as the sea. He was enjoying his life apparently, bossing things in that office. But he told me at once that he could do no more than give me a chance to start at the bottom. I must work up and pass the Board of Trade tests for each grade. I give him credit for painting the picture as dark as he could. He even suggested I should try and get another draughtsman's job if I was afraid of going through the mill. But I didn't know enough to be afraid, and asked him off-hand when he would need me. "'We don't need you,' he said, as if surprised. 'We can get a couple of thousand young fellows to-morrow if we want them. It's up to you.' "That was the first slap in the face. I sat there in that great gloomy vault of an office in Fenchurch Street, looking at the half-models of ships and a map of the docks at Monte Video on the walls, and wondering what I should do. I was not hesitating, you understand, because of pride. No, that was gone. My brother, when he saw Gladys home, had done for that. It was more like a fear gripping at me. I was scared at letting go of my professional easy-going life. I'd never been on a ship since I'd been born on one. I knew nothing about "'When shall I start?' I asked after a while. "'The Corydon's in the river now,' said my uncle. 'They want a Fourth: can you get down to-night?' "'To-night!' I said. 'I've not given notice yet!' "'Phone from here,' he says. "'But I've nothing packed,' I whimpered. And he laughed. "I know now why he laughed. Partly because a landsman is always rather a comic figure to a sailor, partly because he knew how I had been brought up. He had never agreed with the theory of gentility which had taken such a hold of my mother. He was as out of place in his Surbiton home as a bear in a back-yard. His daughters, my cousins, couldn't make him see the importance, in England, of gentility. When he and my father and all the rest of them had been boys on that New England farm, they had had to clear stones off the land. No stones, no dinner. And now he had a house in Surbiton, and was laughing at me, who had never lifted a stone in my life. Even in the works where I was a pupil we had always had a little private lavatory to wash and change in. He laughed at me. He believed one trip would be enough for me. He didn't believe for a minute that I would stick to it. "But I was making up my mind. Somehow or other, in spite of my twenty-five years in cotton-wool, I had imagination enough to see in my uncle's weather-beaten old face something that was not in "'What's she like?' I said, standing up. He took me into another office, and showed me a beautiful model of a steamer. "'There she is,' he says. 'That's the old Corydon. I commanded her for three years.' I can tell you I was pleased to think I was going to sea in such a fine ship. Humph! "I went home and had a talk with my mother. All her ideas were capsized too. Here was her eldest son, the quiet, studious, respectable elder son, out of employment, while her harum-scarum disobedient Frank was getting three hundred a year and with good prospects. She was all bewildered by it. You can't blame her. She looked at me when I told her what I was going to do. 'Take plenty of socks,' she said, quietly. 'You'll need them at sea.' And I suddenly remembered she'd done the very same thing I was to do, long ago; broken out of her life and made a fresh start—on the sea. "And what had happened to me? You'll think I was a pretty cheap sort of a lover to let my brother cut me out so easy as that. You'll say I never really loved her. Who can tell that? Who can say how much or how little he loves? Yes, yes, I loved her. But what, I ask you, is the use of a man mooning his life away for a girl who has never given him a minute's thought? It is a waste of time and energy and life. When that view of worlds outside of mine broke on me the love-trance broke. I said to myself: 'I am young; I will go out and see things.' Well, I went out and I saw things, and I don't regret it. But there's one thing we never see again, and that's the illusion of first love. "I begged my mother to say nothing to Frank about me until I was gone, and a day or two later I slipped away to Paddington with a couple of grips and took the train to Barry Docks. It will give you an idea of the quiet life I had led when I tell you this was my first long journey. I had been to places within one hundred and fifty miles of London, but never farther. I felt lost when they turned me out on the platform at Barry in the rain and dark. A seaport is not a very attractive place to a landsman. "The next twenty-four hours were strenuous for me. More than once I wondered if I could live through it. When I got to the dock I walked up and down looking for a ship that resembled the model of the Corydon. There weren't any. I asked a man in a blue frock-coat if the Corydon had come in. "'Aye,' says he. 'Here she is, just abaft of ye,' and he pointed to a rusty, dirty old tub with a battered funnel and a bridge all blocked with hatches. That the beautiful shiny Corydon? There was the name on her stern—Corydon, London. She was loading coal from a big elevator. Her decks were piled high with it, and where there wasn't coal there was mud, black oozy mud, and ashes and ropes and soppy hatches. I climbed up the ladder and one by one got my grips aboard. And I stood there in the rain, my gloves all black with the coal on the ladder, my nice mackintosh barred with it, and my boots slipping on the iron plates. No one took any notice of me. Men went to and fro in oilskins and shouted, but they didn't seem to see me. Just for a moment I thought of bolting! Humph! "Finally I spoke to one of the men, saying I had a letter for the chief engineer. He took me round into a dark alleyway under the bridge-deck aft and shouted down: 'Here comes the Second,' he says. 'He'll fix ye.' "Well, he came up, that Second did, not very pleased at being disturbed. 'What is it?' he says. He was grease from head to foot, as though some one had been rolling him in a sewer. "'I'm the Fourth Engineer,' I said. 'Oh, are ye,' says he, 'I thought ye were comin' this mornin'. Better get a boiler-suit on and give a hand. We're goin' to sea to-morrow noon.' "He took me along the alleyway and unlocked a door. 'There,' says he, 'there's your room. Ye "'I haven't a boiler-suit with me,' I said, and he looked at me. He was a younger man than I was, and I felt it would be strange to have to take orders from him. 'Oh,' he says, 'you're about my size, I'll lend you one.' I couldn't help thinking as he went into his berth next to ours, that if he was the Second and I was the Fourth, what on earth would I be like when we got to sea? "And then he took me down below. "That was my introduction to my new career. No handshakes, no good night's rest—nothing. I got into the Second's boiler-suit and followed him down. We had to work all night. The Third was down there all the time under the boilers. He was an old chap; must have been sixty, with a moustache that was dirty brown at the tips and grey at the roots, and a crease down each of his cheeks that was always twitching while he chewed. He was lying on his side in a puddle of water, a slush lamp close to his head, working a ratchet-drill into the shell of the boiler. I had to crawl in alongside of him and help him. Me! And I'd been writing 'fitters' instructions' in the office for three years. It was a come-down. "And yet, something inside of me responded to the call. Say it was romance if you like, say it was sentiment, say it was just foolishness. Something inside of me answered to the call. We worked all that night, patching that bad plate on the boiler. The other boilers were under steam, so you can "The Chief came down about three o'clock in the morning and looked through the hole in the boiler casing. He was a little man with a glass eye. 'Is the Fourth there?' he says, sucking at his pipe. 'Yes,' I said, and he raps out, 'Yes what?' Humph! "When the patch was on we had to get the boiler filled and the fires away as soon as we could. I tried to get some information out of the old Third, but he just chewed and spat. When I asked the Second he says, 'Oh Hell, I can't stop to show ye now. Take a hand-lamp and go and see the run o' the pipes yerself.' I was nearly dropping for sheer sleepiness, but I made up my mind I would not give in. At breakfast time the Chief said we'd missed a tide and couldn't get away till midnight, and I thanked God. But it's a funny thing about a steamer, that the more time you have the more work there is to do. We had stores to get stowed away, and as soon as that was done a steam-pipe split "'Haven't you a letter for me?' he says. I gave it to him. 'Captain Carville's nephew, I see. Coming for a trip, or are you going to stick to it?' I looked at him. "'I'm going to stick to it if it kills me,' I said. 'I'm here for keeps.' He nodded. He liked that. "'Got any gear?' he says. I said, 'I've got nothing except an extra suit and some pyjamas.' "He told me to get washed and go ashore and buy some bedding. 'I don't know how you'll get on with that old Third,' he says. 'The last Fourth left because of him.' "'I'm not going to leave, sir,' I said. I wasn't going back for anybody. I was going to find out something about life, right away from everybody I'd ever known. "'Bully for you,' says he, and with that he went away. I went ashore and bought myself some "Never shall I forget that night. I'd meant to write my mother and uncle and tell them I was all right, but I was too tired and worried. The old Third came aboard at ten o'clock with a skinful, and the Second was rushing round cursing me because there was nobody else to curse. The firemen were drunk and the donkey-man was drunk. And at eleven-fifteen the gong sounded for slow-astern. I stood by the telegraph and worked the handle, and do what I would I kept shutting my eyes. My God! I thought, shall I ever sleep again? The old Third stood near me, his eyes all bloodshot, the crease in his cheek working, his dyed moustache all draggled, his breath—Humph! He was cunning enough to pretend he was all right, helping the Second with the reversing gear. Now and again the Chief would come down and give an order, his glass eye fixing me in a queer way. I never got used to that glass eye. It wasn't part of him, so to speak, and it distracted one's attention. The Chief himself would be talking quite friendly to you, when you would suddenly catch sight of that glass eye glaring at you, full of undying and unreasonable hate. He would be roaring with laughter at some joke, while all the time the glass eye seemed to be calculating a cold-blooded murder. It was strange enough in its socket; but I tell you, when I ran up to call him for a hot bearing one night and he looked across at me with one bright blue eye and the other bloody-red and sunken, and I "At last, about one o'clock in the morning, we were outside, and he sent me up to see if the pilot had gone. Just as I stumbled up on the bridge-deck I saw the pilot going over the side, down a rope ladder. Oh, didn't I wish I was going with him! She was beginning to roll, you see. "And yet, though I was in the depths, so to speak, up to the eyes in it, as I stood there in the rain and wind, the sweat bitter cold on my body, I saw the coast-wise lights, and realized with a sudden jump of the heart what I was doing. I was out at sea. And I'd been born at sea. Twenty-six years in cotton-wool! Can you realize what I had done? Somewhere inside of me there was something answering the call. I was going back through toil and sorrow to my own. I was away at last. I went down again into the engine-room and told them that the pilot was gone. The Second says, 'Get yourself turned in, then.' "I could have put my head on his shoulder and cried for joy! "Well, I've said enough to give you an idea of the sudden turn in my fortunes. A week ago I was in love, and comfortably tucked away inside a cozy corner of the professional class. My brother was a mysterious prodigal. Suddenly he butts in, and all is changed. He's snug and safe in a good berth, he's taken up the tale of his girls just where he left off, and I'm out at sea, Fourth Engineer of a rusty old freighter bound for a place I'd never "We struck bad weather as soon as we got into the Bay. The Corydon was loaded to her summer draught and here was a westerly gale coming on her bow, and later on her beam. She rolled day and "At twelve o'clock it was pretty serious. The Chief had the Second out to help with the pumps and sent me to call the old Third. It was his watch on the main engines, you see, twelve to four. Our berth was flooded. There was a couple of inches of water on the floor, and at every sea the water flew through the leaky joints of the dead-lights, all over old Croasan. To and fro on the floor my slippers were floating and a torn magazine swam into the room from the alleyway as I opened the door. The oil from the lamp was dripping on to the drawer tops, and every time she gave a deeper roll the light flared. I put the magazine under it to catch the drip, and as I did so I caught sight of a picture in it, a picture "The Chief decided to cut holes in the suction pipe just under the water-line. Then when the pumps sucked them clear, we bound them up with jointing and cut more holes lower down. Oh! it was grand! For fourteen hours we went on doing that, up to our shoulders in the bilge, the grease caking on us in a fresh layer every time we climbed out to get something in the store. The weather eased a little off Finisterre and we got her righted. We went up to the Chief's room to have a nip of whisky. "'Ye see,' said the Second. 'Ye see, mister, there's some as dinna care.' "Old Croasan came out of the bunk when the trouble was over. I felt too proud of what I'd been through to be hard on the poor old chap, proud of being in the thick of it. I was seeing life at last. This was what I'd come for. 'Ah,' says the Chief, his glass eye fixing me over his whisky glass, 'you'll be marked if you stay on the Corydon.' "I was. It took that old box of misfortune thirty-two days to make Port Duluth. Every day we had some breakdown or other. She was like a good many other ships that fly the Red Ensign, worn out. But did I grumble? Not a bit of it. I looked at it as any man will who's got sand in him. It was a fight. There was no fighting in Victoria Street; it was simply riding through life on rubber tyres. Books, art, comfort, philosophy, all these things are well enough; but the Corydon, the rusty, leaking, treacherous old Corydon, with her starting rivets and banging old engines, she was the real thing, the thing to mark a man and teach him what he's made of. "I don't suppose any of you people have ever heard of Port Duluth. I certainly hadn't. When I asked where it was, the others told me it was 'up a creek.' In England this would have meant very little; but I had learned from my mother to call even the Thames a creek, and so I was able to swallow the apparent paradox of a seven-thousand-ton ship insinuating herself up to what was known locally as 'a railhead.' When I persisted and wanted "To begin with, I learned much about rivers. In England a river is something easily comprehended. You can see along it, and across it, and it is locked, "I asked where we had anchored, seeing no sign of life ashore, and they told me it was the Bar. We must wait for high water. Away ahead was the bar buoy, a white blob on the water. I stood leaning against a stanchion trying to sense the atmosphere of the place until the Second called me, for there was something to do. There was always something to do in that terrible old ship. I went down, and together we wrestled with the dynamo-engine, a cheap contraption with a closed crank chamber full of muddy oil which was supposed to splash into all the bearings, and didn't. We needed a washer, a special sort of thing. The old one was worn out. We needed screws, too, to fasten it with, small brass screws with flat heads that sank in out of sight. When I asked where these were coming from if we hadn't got them on the ship, the Second said with some asperity, that it would be my job to make them on my anchor watch that night. I was surprised at this and made some remark about getting them from ashore, and it so tickled the poor over-worked Second that he stood up suddenly, spun round towards the reversing engine and broke into peals of hysterical laughter. I shall never forget the sight of him as he stood there in his sodden, filthy singlet and dungarees, his arms knotted and burned and bruised, his common little face twisted into an expression of super-human scorn. For a single moment he was sublime, lifted out of himself, with the mere effort of pouring con "I suppose I ought to have been downhearted at being so ignorant and dirty and tired, but I wasn't in the least. It was too interesting. There was a grim irony, to me, in the appalling contrast between the behaviour of that worn-out dynamo and the smug theory in the text-books and trade catalogues I had been used to so long. I had read of the way to detect faults in a circuit, but it seemed to me there was no need to look for faults on the Corydon; it was the virtues, the sound places, that needed looking for. And yet, strange to say, out of her decrepitude loyalty was born. I found it growing on me day by day, a jealous regard for her, the pity that becomes a sort of cantankerous affection. "But to go on with that day, we crossed the bar. It was high water at four in the afternoon and I had to go down again to stand by the telegraph. With my head against the reversing engine wheel I could feel the slow vibration of the anchor coming up, and hear the sough of the exhaust coming back from the windlass. The Second and old Croasan stood near by, their faces blank with waiting and fatigue, like the faces of dead men. Old Croasan's eyelid would flicker now and then and the tip of his tongue would move stealthily round the inside of his lips. He hadn't shaved for several days and his face was vague and venerable, glistening grey bristles. When he leaned gently against the vice-bench and folding his arms, closed his eyes, he looked like a hundred-years'-old corpse. He closed his eyes. It was not interesting to him, this crossing of the bar. "Suddenly we got an order, and we started. I went along the tunnel to see the bearings were all oiled, and while I stood in the dark gloom at the far end, with my hand on the dribbling stern-gland, there came a sudden thump and a grinding shock. The turning shaft shook and chattered before my eyes, the propeller outside caught in something, shuddered, broke clear and beat like a flail. Then the ship lifted bodily and fell, bump, bump, bump. I stood there transfixed. What could it be? I looked along the dark tunnel to where the lights of the engine-room showed in a pale glint and I could have sworn I saw the whole bag of tricks move slowly up and subside as the keel floundered across "And this, mind you, was no breakdown, no emergency, but just the ordinary day's work. If the owners didn't want to risk breaking the ship's back on the bar there were plenty of others who would. It was like putting a horse at a dyke, getting his fore-feet across, and then lashing him furiously until he had kicked a lot of earth away and finally got himself over. When I had put the doors on the ballast pump again I noticed the main engines were running normal once more. We were over. We "And for once the hackneyed, battered, old conventional newspaper gibberish had in it the breath of life. I believed it. At that moment, on the threshold of new experiences, I took the words on trust. Perhaps, for once, the things I had read in books had not eluded me! Perhaps the old gentleman in the flannel nightgown really was a potential African despot. In the midst of my reflections I heard another newspaper phrase, 'Not long ago the rivers ran blood.' This was the Second, who was fond of stories inside comic supplements, and who was recalling a bygone 'atrocity,' I suppose. But it was curious to me, to notice how abruptly they all dropped the journalist jargon the moment they spoke of something they really understood. They regaled me with 'atrocities,' with 'rivers running blood' and 'gold in the forests that no white man had ever penetrated,' with 'power of life and death' and so on, but when I inquired anxiously what this omnipotent monarch had come aboard of us for, they replied without any hesitation, "'To get a drink.' "It seemed a contemptible diversion for a person inspiring such awe politically. I don't say, mind you, that such was his object. My shipmates may have been as much in error about his motives as they were about his power. I was too tired, too full of aches and humiliations of my own, to investigate. He passed across my field of vision, and being the first of his kind, left an ineffaceable impression. The sun went down suddenly soon after, and the coppery glow vanished from the water, leaving it a grey blur. "'In the middle of all the atrocities'! The flashy, bombastic phraseology came back to me with grim insistence that night when I went down at eight o'clock to look after the boilers and pumps and to make, with entirely inadequate means, those brass screws for the dynamo-engine. The engine-room was in darkness save for the hand-lamp that hung over the vice-bench. The fat cotton-wick smoked and crackled, the light draught swirling it towards my head at times, singeing my hair and making my eyes water. Behind me the silent, heated engines stood up, stark and ominous like some emblem of my destiny watching me. The white faces of the gauges over the starting handles stared blankly. From the stokehold came the occasional clink of a shovel or the hollow clang of a fire-door flung to. And I worked. I fought with the greasy brass and the broken, worn-out tools. I made wasters and started again. The sweat poured off me, and I drank thirstily the warm water in the can that "I was suddenly conscious I had no particular reason for calling upon this unknown person in the middle of the night. It is one of the tragedies of human life that while we do most things by instinct or intuition we have to clamp some 'particular reason' on our actions before we can secure the approbation either of others or of ourselves. Some men, like my young brother, never trouble themselves about it. But all my life I have found myself hesitating upon the edge of actions that might be heroic or fantastic or original or simply desirable, just because I couldn't square them with a particular reason. It was so in this instance. I came into the light of that doorway, and hesitated. But the short, broad figure was not like me. In the most matter-of-fact fashion he nodded his head and said in a "He was young and had never shaved the down which grew on his cheeks and the points of his chin. Young as he was he had the lines of half a century scored under his eyes and on his temples, thin lines on clear, yellow skin. The whites of his eyes were yellow too, as though he had suffered from jaundice. Which he had, as I learned very soon after he opened upon me in a clear, sonorous voice that rolled the r's and beat like a flail on the labials and diphthongs. He wore a blue dungaree boiler-suit, which is a combination affair, you know, and on his head he had an old, greasy, red fez. It seemed to me a preposterous piece of fancy dress up a creek "At that time, too, I was not seeking spiritual communion. The moment I had caught sight of that little lathe I wanted to ask if he could make screws. I wanted screws, brass ones with flat heads. As soon as I could I explained this to him. Yes, he replied, with his smile of supreme intelligence, he "'Books!' I repeated, surprised; 'what kind of books?' I had an idea he could take no interest in anything save grammars and dictionaries. Somehow, in spite of all his acquirements, one didn't associate that transitory creature with books at all. 'Eh?' he said, harshly, 'I don't understand. You "It was confusing. Here was another victim of words, words he didn't even clearly understand. He lived apparently in a copy-book world, full of shining maxims and idiotic generalities. For an instant I had a queer feeling of talking to one of those automatons one sees on the stage—figures with gramaphones in their interiors, and who utter strange, disconcerting sounds. "'I will give you a book,' I said at last, taking up the things, 'and many thanks for these. They said "He didn't understand a word of this explanation, I believe. He smiled, moved his fez round and round his head as if on a socket, and remarked, 'Yes, you all right now, eh?' "'Yes,' I said, patiently, 'but if you want a book on navigation, mathematics and so on, I can let you have it.' "He nodded, but I don't think he followed me. So I took my screws and washer, and telling him I would return, hurried back to the ship. You know, I felt triumphant. I had scored, not only over my shipmates, but over him, over Africa, over the whole of the universe that wasn't Me, myself. I had taken a step forward. It is curious how difficult it is to describe the simplest evolutions of the soul. But I was no longer oppressed by Mister George and his languages. I had accomplished something far beyond the most abstruse philologies—I had got what I wanted. "And I took him his book, a big obsolete tome bound in hide. He was rapturous, wiping his hands on some waste and opening it upside down. 'Ah, yes, very good, very good!' he said. 'I read plenty English books, yes. Thank you, I am very much obliged. Knowledge is power, eh?' I smiled, I suppose, for he leaned toward me eagerly. 'No? You think not, eh? Ah, when I had the jaundice, I read many books.' He waved his arms to indicate long galleries of libraries. 'Plenty, plenty, books. Oh, yes.' Once again I had the feeling of listening to an "I ran away at last. I daresay he would have practised his English on me till daybreak if I hadn't run away. I went down and found things all quiet, and then I came up and roused old Croasan. He was lying on the settee and the gin-bottle stood on the chest-of-drawers, empty. He raised himself on his elbow and looked at me gloomily. I was so glad to get back and talk to a real human being, drunk as he was, that I patted him on the shoulder and told him we would have the dynamos fixed up in the morning. He blinked, and fell back exhausted. I hoisted him up again and he looked round resentfully. 'Aren't you going to turn out?' I asked him. 'Come on, Mister.' 'Is she all right?' he growled. 'Yes, of course!' I answered, rashly, and he promptly lay down again and declined to move. I was in a "Well, four voyages I made in that old packet, each one worse than the last, I believe—four voyages after nuts, and palm-oil, and enormous square logs of mahogany, and cages of snarling leopards and screaming parrots, and tanks of stealthy serpents. I used to wonder who found it worth while to hire us to bring such bizarre and useless things into England. Once one of the twenty-five hundred weight barrels of palm oil slipped from the slings and fell on the deck with a soft crash. It smashed like an egg, of course. Indeed, as the mess burst and splashed all over everybody on the after-deck, it was not unlike an enormous yolk in its brilliant gamboge colour, with the split and dismembered staves lying radially round it like dirty white of egg. And someone muttered that 'there was twenty quid gone.' The leopards, too, struck me on the homeward trip. Anything less like the traditional wild "We did not always go to the same place. In fact, I saw very little of Mister George. Railheads advance with our sphere of influence. But I stuck it, and put in my year of service for my license. I was saving money and looking forward to a spell in London. All the other people I knew I let go. I realized I had been all the time an alien in that genteel professional world. "And so, one day, a year after I'd set foot on the deck of that old ship, I said good-bye to the men I'd sailed with and took the train to Paddington. How strange I felt I can't explain. As the cab took me down the familiar streets and I saw the old familiar sights, I felt—well, you'll know when you go back! Something had snapped. I was in it, but not of it. I saw the young men walking in the streets, with their high collars and nice clothes, their newspapers and walking-sticks and gloves. What did they know? I'd been like that, just as ignorant, just as conceited and narrow-minded. And I thought of the Corydon and the blue tropic sea! "I took a room at a hotel and went out to see my "I found my mother living alone. He was gone again! She, Gladys, was gone too. They hadn't been married, not a bit of it. He never had any intention of marrying her. It was very difficult to get the actual story out of my mother. She didn't know much, and she was reluctant to tell me even that. But I found out at last that she, Gladys, had followed him. Nobody knew where. He had given up his agency and started on a tour for some patent tyre company. And she, at the lifting of his finger, had gone after him." Mr. Carville paused and looked towards a figure coming into view on the path. It was Miss Fraenkel. I looked at my watch. It was twelve o'clock. "Miss Fraenkel is coming up to lunch," I said to Bill. "Will you join us, Mr. Carville?" He stood up shaking his head and brushing the tobacco ash from his vest. "I'll look in afterwards," he said, "but I told the wife I'd be back to dinner." "Where was she, all the time, Mr. Carville?" asked Bill. He laughed and stepped down from the porch. "I will tell you this afternoon," he said, and reached the sidewalk as Miss Fraenkel crossed the street. He lifted his hat absently and passed on, and she, pausing for a moment, gave him one of "Why didn't you come sooner?" said Bill, "we've been expecting you." "I've been getting signatures," she replied. "Is that him?" "Yes. He's coming back after lunch." "Did you tell him that I want to get his wife to join?" We were silent. We had forgotten all about Miss Fraenkel's suffrage. She scanned our faces with an eager look in her hazel eyes. I made an effort. "We thought," I said, "we thought that perhaps you would be able to explain better than we could how——" "Why, what have you been talking about, then?" she asked. "We haven't been talking," I replied, looking at the little brass pilgrim on the door. "We've been listening." And then we went in to lunch. |