Chapter 6

Several cabs, on their way to a ship outward bound, made an increasing noise in the night, rattled by on the cobbles outside, their occupants roaring a sentimental chorus, and drowned what the doctor was saying.

". . . folly. Worse than folly." He was holding his gloves now, and was lightly flicking the edge of the table with them in place of verbal emphasis. He suddenly regarded me again as if he strongly suspected me of being his antipathy. "Who but a fool would take a woman to such a country as that? Any romantic sentimentalist, I suppose. I forget the name of the ship. There was, you might say, hardly sufficient room to paint a name on her. She was no more than a tug. It was a miracle she survived to get there at all, for she had crossed from England. Crossed the Western ocean in such a craft, and brought a woman with him. Did ever you hear of such folly?"

Now I was certain of our whereabouts, and felt a weak inclination to show an elder that I, too, knew something about it; but when I leaned forward eagerly and was about to speak, the doctor screwed in that devastating monocle, and I felt I was only a curious example of the sort of thing he especially disliked. For a minute, in which I wondered if I had quite stopped his guarded flow, he said no more. Then he addressed his eyeglass to a panel of the partition, and flicked his gloves at that.

"I had noticed for some days that little craft lying near us, but gave her no attention. I had sixteen men to attend to with complexions like lemons, and one died. There was no time to bother with other folk's troubles. Our skipper, one breakfast-time, told me there was a woman aboard that little thing, and he'd been asked whether I'd go over. She was ill.

"I've seen some queer packets of misery at sea, but never one that touched that ship. Her skipper seemed a regular fool. I had to ask him to speak up, for he mumbled like a boy who has been caught out, and knows it is useless to pretend. I learned from him that he was only just beginning his voyage. You understand? He was just beginning it, there. He was going up-river, to a point not on the chart. I cannot make out now whether he wanted to put that woman ashore to get home in comfort at the first opportunity, or whether . . . it's impossible to say. One would sooner believe the best of another man, with half a chance. After all," said the doctor bitterly, "as long as the woman survived I suppose she was some consolation in misery.

"I scrambled over the deck lumber. There was hardly room to move. I found her in a cabin where she could get little seclusion from the crew. Hardly any privacy at all, I should say. As soon as I saw her I could make a guess . . . however, I told the fellow afterwards what I thought, and he gave me no answer. He even turned his back on me. He must have known well enough that that river was no place for any sort of white woman. He was condemning her perhaps to death just to make an ugly job more attractive.

"I admit," said the doctor, with a sly glance, "that she could make it attractive, for a sort of man. She was wrapped in a rosy dressing-gown. She held it together with her hands. I noticed them . . . anybody might . . . they were covered with rings. She had character, too. She made me feel, the way she looked at me, that I was indiscreet in asking personal questions. I could see what was wrong with her. It was debility, but all the same the beginning of an end not far off, in that country.

"'You'll have to get out of this,' I told her.

"'Can't be done, Doctor,' she said coolly.

"'It can. A liner for England will be here in another week, and you must take it.'

"'I don't,' she said. She was quiet enough, but she seemed a very wilful woman. 'I've got my job here.'

"I told her that the skipper of her ship would never carry out his orders, because they could not be carried out. I told her, what was perfectly true, that their craft would rot on a sandbar, or find cataracts, or that they'd all get eaten by cannibals, or die of something nasty. I admit I tried to frighten her.

"'It's no good, Doctor,' she said. 'You can't worry me. I've got my work to do in this ship, like the others.'

"'Pooh!' I said to her. 'Cooking and that. Anybody could do it. Let the men do it. It's not a woman's job.'

"'You're wrong,' she said. 'It's mine. You don't know.'

"I began to get annoyed with this stubborn creature. I told her she would die, if she didn't leave the working of that ship to those who ought to do it.

"'Who ought?' she asked me, in a bit of a temper. 'I know what I have to do. I'm going through with it. It's no good talking. I'll take my chance, like the rest.'

"So I had to tell her that I was there because the master of her ship had sent for me to give my advice. My business was to say what she ought to do.

"'I don't want to be told. I know,' she said. 'The captain sent for you. Talk to him.'

"My temper was going, and I told her that it was something to know the captain himself had enough sense to send for me.

"'Look here,' she told me. 'I've had enough of this. I want to be alone. Thank you for troubling to come over.'"

The doctor lifted his shoulders, and made a wry face, that might have been disdain or pity.

"I was leaving her, but she called to me, and I went back. She held out her hand. 'I do thank you for troubling about me. Of course I do. But I want to stay on here--I must.'

"'Well, you know the penalty,' I said. 'I was bound to tell you that.'

"'What of it?' she said, and laughed at me. 'We musn't bother about penalties. Good-bye!'

"I must say she made me feel that if the skipper of that ship had been of different metal, she might almost have pulled him through. But what a man. What a man! I saw his miserable little figure standing not far from where my boat was when I was going. He made as if he were coming to me, and then stopped. I was going to take no notice of him, but went up and explained a thing or two. I'll bet he'll remember them. All he said was: 'I was afraid you'd never change her mind,' and turned away. What a man! There was a pair for you. I could understand him, but what could have been in her mind? Whatever made her talk like that? That's the way of it. There's your romance of the tropics, and your squalid Garden of Eden, when you know it. A monotonous and dreary job, and a woman."

The landlord returned. The monocle fixedly and significantly regarded me. "Have another, Doctor," said the landlord, pointing to the empty tankard. "How long were you in Macassar?" The doctor turned briskly to his old friend, and began some chaff.

4

Ferguson, who had just come into port with a damaged propeller shaft, was telling us how it was. This was his first expansive experience, and there could be no doubt the engine-room staff of the _Torrington_ had behaved very well. The underwriters had recognized that, and handsomely, at a special meeting at Cornhill. Though Ferguson was young for a chief engineer, his professional elders, who were listening to him, showed some critical appreciation of the way he solved his problem. He was sitting at a table of the _Negro Boy_, drawing a diagram on it, and they stood round.

"There. That was where it was. You see what we had to do. It would not have been so bad in calm weather, but we were labouring heavily, all the way from Savannah. Our old man did not think it possible to do it. But it was no good waiting for something worse to happen."

The matter grew too technical for me. There was cargo jettisoned, and ballast tanks emptied aft. The stern of the _Torrington_ was lifted so that her propeller at intervals was clear. Ferguson then went overside on life-lines. When he was not submerged, he was trying to put his ship right again; and when he became exhausted, one of his colleagues took his place, to see whether, while escaping drowning, he could continue the work of salvation. They all escaped, and the _Torrington_ put back to Tampa for repairs, which her own engineers accomplished.

The demonstration was over, and Ferguson's story was lapsing into general gossip. The party of men began to dissolve.

"Who do you think I saw at Tampa?" Ferguson asked Macandrew. "Old Purdy."

"What?" cried Macandrew. "Is he alive?"

Ferguson laughed. "Just about. What's he been doing? I thought he had chucked the sea. It was in the Customs Office. I'd been there to make a declaration, and in one of those long corridors there he stood, all alone, with his hat in his hand, perhaps cooling his head. I hardly knew him. He's more miserable than ever."

"Did he say anything?" asked Macandrew.

"About as much as usual. I didn't know him at first. He seemed rather ill. The temples of that high forehead of his were knotted with veins. It nearly gave me a headache to look at him."

Several of us were impelled to ask a number of questions, but Ferguson was listening now, with the detachment of youth, to the end of a bawdy story that two men were laughing over. This had already displaced Purdy in his mind.

"Didn't he say anything at all? Didn't he mention Hanson?" we asked Ferguson.

"Eh? What, old Purdy? I don't think so. I don't remember. Now you mention it, I think I did hear somewhere that Hanson was with Purdy. But I don't believe he said anything about him. I was just going to ask him to come and have a drink, when he said good-bye. All I know is I saw him standing there like a sorrowful saint. Then he walked off slowly down the corridor. He's a sociable beggar. I couldn't help laughing at him."

5

There was a notice in the window of the _Negro Boy_, and I discovered that the tavern was under Entirely New Management. The picture sign over the principal door had been renewed. The mythical little figure which had given the public-house its name was no longer lost in the soot of half a century. He was now an obvious negro boy, resplendent in a golden coat. The reticence of the green window-curtains had become a bright vacancy of mirrors, and the tavern was modern within. Reform had destroyed the exclusiveness of the saloon bar; instead of privacy, distant mirrors astonished you with glimpses of your own head which were incredible and embarrassing in their novelty. The table-tops were of white marble supported on gilded iron. The prints and lithographs of ships had gone from the walls, and were replaced by real pictures converted to the advertisement of various whiskies--pictures of battleships, bull-dogs, Scotsmen, and figures in armour tempted from their ancient posts in baronial halls, after midnight, to finish the precious drink forgotten by the guests. In accordance with this transformation the young lady in attendance at the bar was in neat black and white, with her hair as compact and precise as a resolution at a public meeting which had been passed even by the women present. She was severe and decisive, and without recognition of anything there but the tariff of the house, and sold her refreshments as in a simple yet exacting ritual which she despised, but knew to be righteous.

It was many months since I had been there. Macandrew was no nearer than Rotterdam, and perhaps would not see London that voyage. There had been a long period in which change had been at work at the docks, even to their improvement, but through it all not one of my old friends had returned home. They had approached no nearer than Falmouth, the Hartlepools, or Antwerp, with a slender chance that they would come to the Thames, and next we heard of them when they were bound outwards once more, and for a period known not even to their wives. The new _Negro Boy_ had not the appearance of a place where I could expect to find a friend, and I was leaving it again, instantly, when a tall figure rose in a corner waving a reassuring hand. I did not recognize the man, but thought I knew his smile, which made me look at him in dawning hope. The grin, evidently knowing its power, was maintained till I saw it indubitably as Hanson's. He made a remembered gesture with his spectacles. "I was just about sick of this place," he said. "I've waited here for an hour hoping somebody would turn up. Where's Macandrew now?"

"In Rotterdam. I don't think he will be home this voyage."

"And what's happened to this house? Where's the old man?"

"You know all I know about it. I haven't been here for nearly a year. We must expect progress to make things better than they were. Where have you come from?"

"I'm running between Liverpool and Baltimore now, in the Planets. They're comfortable ships, but I don't admire the Western ocean. It's too savage and cold. How is Macandrew? I came up from Liverpool because I felt I must see him again. I heard he was here."

From the way he talked, I thought he preferred those subjects requiring the least effort for a casual occasion. "Now and then," I had to tell him, "some of us have wondered what happened to the _Cygnet_."

Hanson's smile became effulgent. My remark might have reminded him of a most enjoyable joke, but he made no sign, while enjoying it privately, that he intended to share it with me at any time.

"There was a _Cygnet_, wasn't there?" he asked, when my patience had nearly gone. "I should like somebody to confirm it. The reason I came to this house tonight, to be candid, was just to see this room again, to settle a doubt I had. Didn't Macandrew stand over there, and show concern because a fair, plump woman wasn't quick enough with his beer?"

I admitted this, as an encouragement. "But when I got here tonight," continued Hanson, "the change made me feel my mind had lost hold. I must say it's a relief to see you."

"Has this anything to do with the _Cygnet_?" I asked.

"Everything. I had the time of my life. I wouldn't have missed it for anything. But somehow, now and then, I want to be quite sure I had it myself, and not some other fellow." He beamed with the very remembrance of the experience, and nodded his head at me. He leaned over the table to me in confidence. "Have you ever been to the tropics? I don't mean calling at Colombo or Rio. I mean the back of things where there's a remarkable sun experimenting with low life and hardly anybody looking on. If ever you get the chance, you take it. It alters all your ideas of time and space. You begin to learn what stuff life is made of when you see a tropical forest, and see nothing else for months. On the other hand," he said, "you become nothing. You see it doesn't matter to others what happens to you, and you don't care much what happens to others."

"You don't care? It doesn't matter?" I said in doubt to this young mathematician and philosopher, who had been experimenting with life. "Isn't that merely romantic?"

"Romance--romance be damned! I got down to the facts."

"Well, get me down to them. I should like the facts. I want to hear what this strange voyage was like."

"As you know," Hanson assured me, "I went out merely to see what would happen to myself, in certain circumstances. I knew I was going to be scared, and I was. There is a place called Tabacol on the river, and we anchored there after our ocean passage for more than a week. I don't know why, and it was no use asking Purdy. Probably he didn't know. I had made up my mind to make the engines move and stop, whenever ordered, and then see where we are. Anyway, after the racket of the sea voyage, when the engines stopped at Tabacol the utter silence was as if something which had been waiting there for you at once pounced. The quiet was of an awful weight. I could hardly breathe, and chanced to look at the thermometer. It stood at 132 degrees. I don't know how I got outside, but when I came to I was on my back on deck, and Jessie was looking after me. I remember wondering then how a big, fleshy woman like her could stand it, and felt almost as sorry for her as I did for myself."

"Did she look ill?"

"Jessie? Oh, I don't know. She looked as if she might have been having a merrier time. Well, we left Tabacol, and I felt we were leaving everything we knew behind us. I got the idea, in the first day on the river, that we were quite lost, and were only pushing the old _Cygnet_ along to keep up our spirits. We crawled close under the walls of the forest. Our vessel looked about as large and important as a leaf adrift. That place is so immense that I saw we were going to make no impression on it. It wouldn't matter to anybody but ourselves if it swallowed us up. On the first day I saw a round head and two yellow eyes in it, watching us go by. The thought went through my mind: 'a jaguar.' The watching face vanished on the instant, and I always felt afterwards that the forest knew all about us, but wouldn't let us know anything. I got the idea that it wasn't of the least use going on, unless we didn't intend to treat the job seriously. If we were serious about it then it was evident we ought to turn back."

"Didn't the skipper ever say what he thought of it?"

"What could Purdy think, or do? There was that river, and the forest on both sides of it, and the sun over us. Nothing else but the quiet; and we didn't know where our destination was. We anchored every evening, close to the bank. One evening, as we anchored, a shower of arrows clattered about us. There was just one shower, out of the trees, or out of the clouds."

"What was Jessie doing all this time?" I ventured to ask him.

"Why, what was any one doing? She wasn't an anxiety of my department. I suppose she was there for the only reason I had--because she asked for it. It was the same next day, except that instead of more arrows we found a python in the bunkers. Came aboard over the hawsers, I suppose. We were a lively lunatic asylum below while killing it with fire-shovels and crowbars. That was what the voyage was like. The whole lot of it was the same, and you knew quite well that the farther you went the less anything mattered. There were slight variations each day of snakes, mosquitoes, and fevers, to keep you from feeling dead already."

"I've often wondered," I confessed, thinking to bring Hanson to something I wanted to hear, "what happened to your company. Once we had a word of Purdy, but never of Jessie or of you."

"Well, now I'm telling you. But you'd have been past wondering if you'd been with us. Purdy wasn't companionable. He'd tell me it was hot. And it was. You could feel that yourself. Jessie cooked our meals. Her galley could have been only a shade better than the engine-room. She began to look rather faded. At last I was the only one who hadn't been down with fever. We crawled on and on, and the only question was where we ourselves would end, for the forest and the river were never going to. But you didn't care. I'd never been better in my life, and here was the thing I'd always wanted to see. I could have gone on for ever like that, wondering what we should see round the next corner.

"Our big troubles were to come. Up to then, we hadn't run into anything really drastic after turning a corner. I suppose we had had about a month of it, and God knows where we were, but we had nobody to ask; and then we ran on a sandbar. The jungle met overhead. We were in what was only a dark drain through the forest. So this, I thought, is where we throw in our hand. We might as well have been in another planet for all the chance we had of getting away from that place. We were aground for two days; the river then rose a foot, and we came off. The men were complaining among themselves by then. I heard them talking to each other about chucking it. It was bound to come. This day they went aft in a body to Purdy. There stood Purdy, a little object in white against the gloom of the forest, and he looked about as futile as the last match in a wind at night. He stood fingering a beard he had grown. One of the men was beginning to talk truculently at him. Just then Jessie appeared from below, between me and the group. She had been down with fever for some days, and she surprised me as much as a ghost. She looked rather like one, too. She stood watching Purdy, without moving. He didn't look at her, though he must have known she was there. I'm pretty sure we had to thank her for what happened to us afterwards, for it was then that Purdy began shaking his finger at that big stoker who was shouting. I'd never seen him with such an expression before. As near as he could be wild, he was. 'We're going on,' said Purdy to them very distinctly. 'This ship continues her voyage. If you want to leave her here, I'll put you ashore.' He walked away some paces, and came back to the men. Then he said something more in his usual voice. 'Do you men tell me you're afraid of the job? I don't believe it. It can be done. We'll do it. We'll do it. Mr. Hanson,' he called out, 'we are ready to get under way. Would you please stand by?'

"The men never said another word. They went for'ard. It was very curious, but after that they behaved as though they had another skipper. Yet they were properly frightened by what they thought was ahead of them. My lot below were always asking me about it, and I handed them the usual ornamental and soothing lies, in which they believed long enough to keep the steam up. What more could you ask of human nature? So we kept her plugging along, getting nearer and nearer nowhere. We turned another of those dramatic corners, later on, though I forget how much later, and ahead of us the river was piled high with rocks, and was tumbling from above. The _Cygnet_ had had her fair share of luck, but luck could not get her over that. We were all looking at the white water ahead, and feeling--at least I was--that we were being laughed at, when I heard Purdy call me, and turned round. He was hurrying towards me round the gear, and I thought from the look of him that this complete frustration had turned his mind. He signed for me to follow him, and I did it, wondering what we should do with a lunatic added to all the rest of it. I followed him into his cabin. 'What can I do?' he said, and bent over his berth, 'what can I do?'

"Jessie was curled up on her side in his berth, and there was nothing anyone could do. I didn't know she was alive. But she half opened her eyes, without looking up, and her hand began moving towards Purdy. 'That you, Bill?' she said. Purdy flopped down beside her. I got out.

"So I took over for a bit--the mate was no good--and waited for the next thing. That affair disheartened the men a lot, and I took it for granted, from their faces as they stood round that figure in a tarpaulin under a tree in the forest, that we were witnessing the end. There was Purdy, too . . . you couldn't expect much from him after a funeral."

Hanson bent over the table, and began tapping it with a finger, and spoke slowly through a surprise he still felt. "Old Purdy came to me the following morning, and told me what he intended to do. What do you think? He reckoned that, though we were still a hundred miles from the headquarters of the consignees, an outpost was probably no farther than just above the falls. He himself was going to prospect, for there should be a native trail through the woods, past the rapids; and he left me in charge.