Chapter 5

The _Negro Boy_ tavern is known by few people in its own parish, for it is a house with nothing about it to distinguish its fame to those who do not know that a man may say to his friend, when their ships go different ways out of Callao, "I may meet you at the _Negro Boy_ some day." It is in a road which returns to the same point, or near to it, after a fatiguing circuit of the Isle of Dogs. No part of the road is better than the rest. It is merely a long road. That day when I first heard of Bill Purdy I was going to the tavern hoping to meet Macandrew, Chief of the _Medea_. His ship was in again. But there was nobody about. There was nothing in sight but the walls, old, sad, and discreet, of the yards where ships are repaired. The dock warehouses opposite the tavern offered me their high backs in a severer and apparently an endless obduracy. The _Negro Boy_, as usual, was lost and forlorn, but resigned to its seclusion from the London that lives, having stood there long enough to learn that nothing can control the ways of changing custom. Its windows were modest and prim in green curtains. Its only adornment was the picture, above its principal door, of what once was a negro boy. This picture now was weathered into a faded plum-coloured suit and a pair of silver shoe-buckles--there was nothing left of the boy himself but the whites of his eyes. The tavern is placed where men moving in the new ways of a busy and adventurous world would not see it, for they would not be there. Its dog Ching was asleep on the mat of the portico to the saloon bar; a Chinese animal, in colour and mane resembling a lion whose dignity has become sullenness through diminution. He could doze there all day, and never scare away a chance customer. None would come. But men who had learned to find him there through continuing to trade to the opposite dock, would address him with some familiar and insulting words, and stride over him.

The tavern is near one of the wicket gates of the irregular intrusion into the city of a maze of dock basins, a gate giving those who know the district a short cut home from the ships and quays; the tavern was sited not altogether without design. And there came Macandrew through that gate, just as I had decided I must try again soon. His second, Hanson, was with him. They crossed to the public-house, and we stooped over the yellow lump of Chinese apathy to talk to him, and went through the swing doors into the saloon. The saloon was excluded from the gaze of the rest of the house by little swinging screens of frosted glass above the bar, for that was where old friends of the landlord met, who had known him all the time their house-flags had been at home in the neighbouring docks; and perhaps had even sailed with him when be himself went to sea. A settee in red plush, salvage from the smoke-room of a liner, ran round the walls, with the very mahogany tables before it which it knew when afloat. Some men in dingy uniforms and dungarees were at the tables. Two men I did not know stood leaning over the bar talking confidentially across it to a woman who was only a laugh, for she was hidden. One of the men turned from the counter to see who had come in.

"Hullo Mac," he cried, in a voice hearty with the abandon of one who, perhaps, had been there long enough; "look here, here's Jessie says she's going to leave us."

A woman's hand, spoiled by many heavy rings, moved across the counter and shook his arm in warning. The youngster merely closed his own hand over it. "Isn't it hard. Really going to forsake us. Won't mix your whiskey or uncork my lemonade any more. What are we going to do when we come home now?"

There was an impatient muttering beyond him, and he made public a soothing and exaggerated apology. All the men in the room, even the group bent over a diagram of a marine engine they had drawn in chalk on their table, looked up in surprise, first at the youngster who had raised his voice, and then to watch the tall shadow of a woman pass quickly down the counter-screen and vanish. Still laughing, the young man, with his uniform cap worn a little too carelessly, nodded to the company, and went out with his companion.

Macandrew stared in contempt at the back of the fellow as he went. "A nice boy that. Too bright and bonny for my ship. What's that he was saying about Jessie?" He tried to see where she was, and lowered his voice. "I know his kind. I saw them together last night, in the Dock Road. What does she have anything to do with him for? We know her of course . . . but even then. . . . She's really not a bad sort. She's like that with all those young dogs. Can't help it, I suppose."

He moved to the bar, a massive figure, beyond the age of a sea-going engineer, but still as light on his feet as a girl. "Where's she gone?" He pushed open one of the little glass screens, and put his petulant face, with its pale eyes set like aquamarines in bronze, into an opening too small to frame it. "Can you see her, Hanson?"

Hanson winked at me, adjusted the spectacles on his nose, and grinned. With that grin, and his spectacles, he was as surprising as a handsome gargoyle. His height compelled him to lean forward and to grin downward, even when speaking to a big man like Macandrew. He turned to his chief now, and both hands went up to his spectacles. In the way the corners of his mouth turned up before he spoke, whimsically wrinkling his nose, and in his intent and amused regard, there was a suggestion of the mockery of a low immortal for beings who are fated earnestly to frustrate themselves. His grin gave you the uncomfortable feeling that it was useless to pretend you were keeping nothing from him.

"Here goes," said Hanson. "Never mind Jessie. I've got something to tell you, Chief. I'm leaving you this voyage."

Macandrew was instantly annoyed. "Going? Dammit, you can't. Look at the crowd I've got now. You mustn't do it."

"I must. They are a thin lot, but you could push the old _Medea_ along with anything. I've got another ship. My reason is very good, from the way I look at it."

Hanson turned his grin to me. He was going to enjoy the privilege of seeing his reasons deemed unreasonable. "Don't think it's a better job I've got. It's worse. It's a very rummy voyage. We may complete it, with luck. It's a boat-running lunacy, and some mining gear. She's called the _Cygnet_. I've been over her, and we shall call her something different before we see the last of her."

"Then why are you going?" I asked him.

"To see what will happen. . . ."

Macandrew interrupted him. "What? And you next on the list for Chief? You're romantic, young man, and that means you're no engineer. Is there a lot of money in it?"

"There isn't, but there's some life. I want to know what I'm made of. Shall I ever learn it under you? Down below in the _Medea_ is like winding up a clock and going to sleep. Do you know the _Cygnet_ has six inches of freeboard?" He was talking to me, but kept glancing sideways to see what effect this had on Macandrew. But Macandrew's broad back was impassive.

"Six inches of freeboard, barring her false bulwarks of deal boards, and she's going out to--I forget the name of the place, but I could show you where it is within a hundred miles on a map that doesn't give its name. It's up the Pondurucu."

Macandrew made no sign, and Hanson, his humour a little damped, spoke more seriously. "I don't think she'll ever get there, but it will be interesting to see where she stops, and why."

Macandrew heaved round on his junior. "There's drivel. It sounds well from an engineer and a mathematician, doesn't it?" He turned away again. "Supposing," he said, over his shoulder, "supposing you pull this ship through all right, then where will you be? Any better off?"

"I think so," said Hanson. He couldn't talk to Macandrew's back, so he bent over me and pointed a challenging finger at my necktie. "I've never risked anything yet, not even my job. This is where I do it. It'll be nice to attempt something when the odds are that you can't finish it, and there's nothing much in it if you do. Why," he said, grinning at his Chief's back, "if I were to stay with him I'd become so normal that I'd slip into marriage and safety as a matter of course, and have to give up everything."

"Who's in charge of this lunacy?" asked Macandrew. His voice was a little truculent.

"All right, Chief. I shan't remember his name any the better because you're annoyed with me. I haven't seen the skipper yet. I think I heard him called Purdy."

"Purdy? Bill Purdy?" Macandrew was incredulous. "Do you know what you've let yourself in for? If Purdy's got the job, I know why. Nobody else would take it, and he's the last man, anyway, who ought to have it."

"What, drink?" asked Hanson.

"Lord, no. Not Purdy. No. It's the man himself. I've known him a long time, and I like him, but he'll never do. He can't make up his mind to a course. Don't you remember the _Campeachy_ case? I expect it was before your time. Purdy had her. He was coming up-Channel, and got nervous over the weather, and put into Portland for a pilot. There was no pilot. So he decided to put out again and go on. It never occurred to him that as he was in shelter he'd better stay there till a pilot arrived, because getting out of that was exactly when he'd want one. He put her ashore. That was like Purdy, to play for safety and make a wreck. When he got over the fuss Lloyd's raised about it he refused to take command again for some time. He couldn't even make up his mind whether he wanted a ship at all."

Hanson listened to this with the air of one who was being reassured in a doubtful enterprise.

"You mistake me, Chief," he said. "You are only improving my reasons for going. Not only is the ship crank, but so is her skipper. Now tell me . . ."

Macandrew frowned at his junior, and his curiously pale eyes became distinctly inhuman. I believe he thought his counsel was being laughed at. But the door opened, and he touched Hanson's arm. A little man of middle age stood there, who turned, and actually prevented the doors from swinging together with their usual announcement of another customer. For only a moment he raised his downcast eyes to see who was there, and then nodded sadly to Macandrew. His drooping moustache conformed to the downward lines of his face, which was that of a man who had been long observing life with understanding, and had not a lively opinion of it.

Macandrew's demeanour changed. It was now mild and almost affectionate as he greeted the little man. "Come over here, Purdy, and tell us what you've been doing. Here's Hanson, this young fellow. I hear he's sailing with you. He's your Chief. You'd better know him."

Purdy raised his eyes in a grave and momentary survey, made to shake hands with Hanson, but hesitated, and did so only because Hanson put out his own great fist with decision. Purdy did not speak, except to say to Hanson: "We're signing-on tomorrow. I'll meet you at the shipping office then." He seemed to forget the pair of them, paused, and went to a far vacant corner of the bar. The barmaid, as he got there, returned, and stopped to say something to him.

"Well, I'm damned," muttered Macandrew. "Look here, Jessie," he cried, "here's all us young men been waiting for nearly twenty minutes, and you take no notice of us, but as soon as a captain looks across the counter, there you are. But how did you know he was a captain? That's what I'd like to know. He's only wearing a bowler hat."

2

The _Medea_ had been ordered unexpectedly to Barry for loading, to take the place of an unready sister-ship; and Macandrew, of whom I have had much experience, would be active, critical of what a dog must put up with in life, and altogether unfit for intimate, amiable, and reminiscent conversation. Yet I wanted to see him again before he left, and went past the Board of Trade Office hoping for signs of the _Medea_, for I had heard she was assembling a crew that morning. But the marine-store shops, with their tarpaulin suits hanging outside open-armed and oscillating, looked across to the men lounging against the shipping-office railings, and the idlers stared across at the tarpaulins. It did not appear to be a place where anything was destined to happen. It merely looked like rain.

Macandrew might be inside with his crowd of firemen and greasers. Behind the brass grille there a clerk, solitary and absorbed in his duties, bent over a pile of ships' articles, and presented to the seamen in the public space beyond him only the featureless shine of a bald head. The seamen, scattered about in groups, shabby and listless, with a few of their officers among them, were as sombre and subdued as though they had learned life had nothing more to offer them, and they were present only because they might as well use up the salvage of their days. The clerk raised his head and questioned the men before him with a quick, inclusive glance. "Any men here of the _Cygnet_?" he demanded. His voice, raised in certainty above the casual murmuring of the repressed, made them all as self-conscious and furtive as though discovered in guilt. Hanson's head appeared above the crowd, as he rose from a bench and went to the official. "I'm the engineer of the _Cygnet_. We're waiting for Captain Purdy."

The clerk complained. He pulled out his watch. "He said he would be ready for me at ten this morning. Now you've lost your turn, and there are three other ships." He turned away in a manner which told every one that Hanson had now become non-existent, pushed aside the _Cygnet's_ papers, and searched the room once more. "Ah, good morning, Captain Hudson. You ready for me? Then I'll take you next." The captain went around to stand beside the official, and his crew clustered on their side of the bars, with their caps in their hands.

"A good start that," said Hanson to me. "Perhaps, after all, we never shall start. Must be a rum chap, that Purdy."

He told me the _Medea's_ crowd was there, but perhaps Macandrew had already signed, and so would not appear. That meant I might not see him for another year; but as I left the office I found him coming up its steps outside, and not as though there were the affairs of a month to be got into two days, but in leisurely abstraction. He might have been making up his mind that, after all, there was no need to call there, for he was studying each step as if he were looking for the bottom of a mystery. His fingers were twirling the little ivory pig he carries as a charm on his watchguard. The pig is supposed to assist him when he is in a difficulty. He raised his eyes.

"Anyhow," he despaired to me with irrelevance, "I can't do anything for him."

I waited for the chance of a clue. "I thought," Macandrew quietly soliloquized, "he knew better than that. He's been a failure, but all the same, he's got a better head than most of us. She's sure to bring him to grief."

"What's all this about?" I ventured.

"I've just been talking to Purdy. You remember what Hanson said of that voyage he's making? Purdy is taking Jessie with him. You don't know Purdy, but I do. And I know Jessie; but that's nothing."

"Taking her with him?" I asked; "but how. . . ."

"Oh, cook, of course. That'll be it. She'll be steward, naturally. That's reasonable. You've seen her. Jessie's the sort of woman would jump at the chance of such a pleasant trip, as cook."

"I don't understand. . . ."

"Who said you did? Nobody does but the pair of them. I know what another man might see in Purdy. But a woman! He's middle-aged, quiet, and looks tired. That woman is young and lively, and she'll be bored to death with him on such a trip."

"But I thought you said . . ."

"What have I said? I've said nothing. Jessie's away to sea as cook. Why not? I'm going inside. Are you coming in?"

Crossing the floor of the office, Hanson caught Macandrew's arm. "Your lot are signing-on now." The master of the _Medea_ was round with the official tallying the men by the ship's papers. "I see it," Macandrew answered. "I've signed. I wanted to catch the old man before he began that job."

"We're hung up for Purdy," Hanson told him. "Nobody seems to know where he is." Hanson was amused.

"Yes. Well . . . he'll be here all right . . . and now this new job which you think so funny, young Hanson. See it goes through. Presently it won't be so funny. Hang on to it then."

Hanson was surprised by this, and a trifle hurt. He was beginning to speak, making the usual preliminary adjustment of his spectacles, when a movement near the door checked him. His hands remained at his glasses, as if aiding his sight to certify the unbelievable.

"What's this?" he murmured. "Here's Purdy. Isn't that the _Negro Boy's_ barmaid with him . . . is she with him?" He continued to watch, apparently for some sign that this coincidence of his captain and a barmaid in a public office was designed.

The bent gaze of the master of the _Cygnet_ might have noticed the boots of his engineer, for he took in the room no higher than that. Then he came forward with his umbrella, still in contemplation. It might have been no more than a coincidence. She, too, approached, a little behind him, but obscuring his dull meagreness, for she was a head taller, and a bold and challenging figure. Her blond hair distinguished her even more than the emphasis of her florid hat. Her pallor that morning refined the indubious coarseness of her face, and changed vulgarity into the attractive originality of a spirited character. Many there knew her, but she recognized nobody. She yawned once, in a fair piece of acting, and in her movements and the poise of her head there was a disdain almost plain enough to be insolence. Purdy turned to her, and the strange pair conferred. I heard Hanson say to himself: "What on earth." She left Purdy, bent her head with a gracious but stressed smile to Macandrew, and went to the bench by the wall, where she sat, waiting, with her legs crossed in a way that was a defiance and an attraction in such a place, where a woman is rarely seen. She read a newspaper, perhaps because that acted as a screen, though she turned its pages with a nervous abruptness which betrayed her imitation of indifference.

3

The _Medea_ and the _Cygnet_, and the other ships I knew which carried those whose fortunes were some concern of mine, might have sailed over the edge of the world. My only communication was with an occasional familiar name in the reports of the _Shipping List_. Then Macandrew came home again. But it was difficult to meet him. Mrs. Macandrew told me he was working by his ship in drydock. They had had trouble with the engines that voyage, and she herself had seen little of him, except to find him, when she came down of a morning, asleep in the drawing-room. Just flung himself down in the first place, you know. In those greasy overalls, too. He had told her the engine-room looked like a scrap-heap, but the ship had to be ready for sea in ten days. Once he had worked thirty-two hours on end. Think of that, and he had not been home for six months. She would strongly advise any girl not to marry a man who went to sea, and if I met Macandrew I was to bring him home at once. Did I hear?

When I found the _Medea_ it was late in the day, for she was not in the dry-dock that had been named. Her Chief had just gone ashore. There was a chance that he would have called at the _Negro Boy_, but he had not been seen there. Except for the landlord, who was at a table talking to a stranger, the saloon was empty. A silk hat was on the table before the stranger, beside a tankard, and the hat was surmounted by a pair of neatly folded kid gloves. "Come over here," said the landlord. "Sit here for a bit, Macandrew may come in. This is Dr. Maslin." A monocle fell its length of black cord from the doctor's eye, and he nodded to me.

"The doctor used to be with me when I was running out East," explained the landlord. "Where did you say you had come from now, Doctor? Oh, yes, Tabacol. Funny name. I was never on the South American coast. After I left you sick at Macassar, the last trip we had together--the old _Siwalik_--I left the sea to younger men. But there you are, Doctor. Still at it. Why don't you give it up?"

The doctor did not answer, except to make a bubbling noise in his tankard. He placed it on the table again delicately and deliberately, and wiped his grizzled moustache with a crimson silk handkerchief. He put up his monocle, and seemed to be intently inspecting a gas globe over the counter. I thought his grimace in this concentration came from an effort to reinforce his will against all curiosity on our part. But it appeared he was really looking at what showed, at an angle, of a portrait on the wall of an inner room. He could just see it, from where he sat. Anyhow, the landlord imagined it was the portrait which had caught his friend's interest. "Looking at that crayon portrait, Doctor? Ah, showy woman, isn't she? Used to be barmaid here. The Lord knows where she is now. Went to sea, like a fool. Stewardess, or something worse. Much more useful here."

The doctor's seamed face, sour and ironic, made it impossible to know whether his expression was one of undisguised boredom, or only his show of conventional politeness. I began to feel I had broken into the intimacy of two men whose minds were dissimilar, but friendly through old associations, and that the doctor's finer wit was reproving me for an intrusion. So I rose, and asked indifferently what sort of a place was Tabacol. Had he been there before?

"Never," said the doctor, "nor is it the kind of place one wishes to see twice. We were kept at Tabacol because so many of our men were down with fever. It is a little distance up the Pondurucu River . . . maybe two hundred miles. Did you say. . . ? No. It is not really out of the way. An ocean steamer calls at Tabacol once a month or six weeks. It is only on the edge of what romantic people call the unknown."

It was evident he thought I could be one of the romantic. He looked at me for the first time, twisting the cord of his eyeglass with his finger and thumb in a fastidious way, and I thought his glance was to dissipate some doubt he had that he ought to be speaking to me at all. He dropped the cord suddenly as if letting go his reserve, and said slyly, with a grave smile: "Perhaps the romantic think the unknown is worth looking into because it may be better than what they know. At Tabacol I used to think the unknown country beyond it looked even duller than usual. There was a forest, a river, a silence, and it was either day or night. That was all. If the voice of Nature is the voice of God. . . ."

The landlord was observing in surprise this conversational excursion by his old friend, as if it were altogether new to him. He laughed aloud, and, putting a consoling hand on his friend's shoulder as he rose, he told us he must leave us for a few minutes, for he had business. "Look more cheerful before I get back, Doctor."

The doctor chuckled, and stretched across to give his gloves a more satisfactory position on his hat. "I don't understand what it can be that attracts people to such a place. Young men, maybe yourself even, wish to go there. Isn't that so? Yes. I've met such men in such places. Then they did not give me the impression that they were satisfied with their romance. Impossible, of course. Romance is never in the place unless we put it there, and who would put even a sentimental dream into such a hole as Tabacol? Tropical squalor. Broken people! I've never seen romance in such a place, and don't expect to. . . ."