Part 3

“Lower Road, Deptford.”... Why, he was less than a quarter of an hour’s walk from the Surrey Commercial Docks, where the “Maid of Athens” was even now lying, having just finished discharging the cargo of linseed she had loaded at the River Plate. He couldn’t do better than get on to the ship, he decided; he had been knocked out of time, and no mistake, and there he would be able to sit down quietly and think things over.

The fog, which had been comparatively light on the higher ground, had been steadily growing denser as he neared the river. There were haloes round the flares that roared above the street stalls, and the lighted shop windows were mere luminous blurs in the surrounding murk.

“Want to mind where you’re steppin’ to-night, Cap’n,” the watchman hailed him as he passed the dock gates; “it’s thick, an’ no mistake--thick as ever I see it!”

Thick wasn’t the word for it! Once away from the fights and noise of the road, the darkness seemed like something you could feel--a solid mass of clammy, clinging moisture, catching at the throat like a cold hand, getting into the backs of your eyes and making them ache and smart. You couldn’t see your hand before your face.

Broughton groped his way along the narrow, slimy causeway which lay between the stacks of piled-up lumber, exuding their sharp, damp, resinous fragrance, and the intense darkness, broken occasionally by a vague tremulous reflection where some ship’s lights contrived to pierce it, which brooded over the unseen waters of the dock. Lights showed forlornly here and there at the openings of the lanes which led away between the piled deals--abysses of blackness as dark as the Magellanic nebulæ. Ship’s portholes gleamed round and watchful as the eyes of huge monsters of the slime. Bollards started up suddenly out of the fog like menacing figures, and cranes straddled the path like black Apollyons in some marine Pilgrim’s Progress. Once Broughton pulled himself up only just in time to save himself from stepping over the edge of a yawning pit of nothingness in which the water lipped unseen against the slimy piles. The thought involuntarily crossed his mind that perhaps he might have done worse; but he put it from him resolutely. His code, a simple one, did not admit suicide as a permissible solution of the problems of life.

All work was long since over, and the docks were as silent and deserted as the grave--nothing to be heard but the steady drip-drip of the rain, once the distant tinkle of a banjo on board some vessel out in the dock, and now and again the melancholy wail of a steamer groping her way up river. The “Maid of Athens” lay right at the far end of one of the older basins; she was all still and dark but for the oil lamp that burned smokily at the head of the gangway, and a faint glow from the galley which showed where the old shipkeeper sat alone with his pipe and his memories.

Old Mike came hobbling out at the sound of Broughton’s step on the plank.

“’Strewth, Cap’n,” he exclaimed in astonishment, “you’ve chose a grand night to come down an’ no fatal error! Will I make a bit o’ fire in the cabin an’ brew ye a cup o’ tea? Sure you’re wet to the skin!”

“Poor old chap!” Broughton thought, as he watched him busying himself about his fire-lighting with the gnarled and shaking hands that had hauled on so many a tackle-fall in their day. It would be a hard blow for him when he knew that ship was to be sold. He had served in Featherstone’s ships many years as A.B. and latterly as bos’n, until a fall from aloft put an end to his seagoing days; and this little job of shipkeeping was one of the very few planks between him and the workhouse.

The world was none too kind to old men who had outlived their usefulness. What was it that old flintstone had said: “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”? Well, that was true enough, anyway!

He called to mind an incident that had happened in Sydney his last voyage there. An old man had come up to him begging for a job. He didn’t care what--night watchman, anything; and he had opened his coat to show that he had neither waistcoat nor shirt beneath it.

“You don’t remember me, Broughton,” the old fellow had said; and, looking closer, he had recognized in that incredibly seedy wreck one of his own old skippers--before whose almost godlike aloofness and majesty he had once trembled in mingled fear and awe. It was a pitiful tale he had to tell. He had been thrown out of a berth at sixty-five, through his ship being lost by no fault of his own, and couldn’t get in anywhere. That proud, arrogant old man, full of small vanities!... Broughton had had little enough cause in the past to think of him over kindly; but the memory of the encounter had remained with him for weeks at the time, and returned to trouble him now with an added significance.

Old Mike’s bit o’ fire smouldered a little and went out, leaving nothing but an acrid stink to mark its passing. The well-stewed tea in the enamel cup at his elbow, with the two ragged slices of margarine-plastered bread beside it in the slopped saucer, grew cold unheeded. Outside, the rain dripped down like slow tears. And there he sat, with his clenched hands before him on the table, staring into the Past.

There wasn’t a plank of her, not a rivet, not a rope-yarn that didn’t mean something to him. True, Old Featherstone had given his money for her: and if he knew that old man aright he hadn’t given a brass farthing more than he could help. But he--what had he given to her? Money--well, he had given that, too, since Old Featherstone had turned mean, though his twenty pounds a month hadn’t run to a great deal. But that was neither here nor there. Things money could never buy he was thinking of, sitting there in the cold, fog-dimmed cabin.

The years of his life had gone into her--affection, understanding, ungrudging service, sleepless nights and anxious days. What wonder that she seemed almost like a part of himself? What wonder that to a man of his rigid, slow-moving type of mind a future in which she had no part was a thing unthinkable?

His memory passed on to all the mates and second mates who had faced him at meals over that very cabin. A regular procession of them--Marston--Reid--what was the name of that chap with the light eyelashes?--Barnes, was it?--Digby--he was a decent chap, now--went into steam years ago and was chief officer in one of the B. I. ships last time Broughton heard of him. That was what _he_ ought to have done. He had known it at the back of his mind all along. But he couldn’t leave her--he couldn’t leave her!

Well, well, there was no use meeting trouble half-way! What was it old Waterhouse, his first skipper in his brassbound days, used to say? “If you’re jammed on a lee shore and can’t stay, why, then try wearing. If that don’t work, try boxing her off. But whatever you do, do something! Don’t sit down and howl!”

They used to laugh at him and mimic him behind his back, cheeky young devils; but it was damned good advice for all that. He was on a lee shore now right enough; but there was bound to be a way out somewhere if he kept his head.

An intense drowsiness and weariness had begun to creep over him--just such a leaden desire for sleep as he had experienced in that same cabin many a time after days of incessant and anxious battling with gales and seas. His unmade bed looked singularly unenticing, so, dragging a blanket from the pile upon it, he kicked off his sodden boots and lay down on the cabin settee.

A rising wind had begun to moan and sigh in the rigging, driving the rain in sheets against the skylight ... there was a way out, a way out ... if he could only think of it ... somewhere....

VI

He awoke to a flood of bright sunshine streaming in through the skylight. The wind had driven fog and rain before it, leaving a virginal and new-washed world under a sky of pale, remote blue.

Broughton heaved himself off the settee, catching a glimpse of himself--haggard, rumpled, and unkempt--in the mirror over the sideboard, as he did so.

“By George!” he said to himself, viewing his reflection, “Marianne would have looked down her nose at me if I’d turned up at Sibella Road like this. She’d have thought I’d been having a thick night, and small blame to her!”

There was no doubt that he presented a sorry spectacle. His trousers were still damp and splashed with mud-stains; his collar was creased and black with fog. He was stiff and tired in body; but his mind, naturally resilient, was infinitely refreshed by the long hours of sleep.

His spirits rose every minute. He whistled to himself as he rummaged out a blue suit from his cabin, washed, and shaved. He even indulged in a smile as he recalled the little lawyer and his two singlets.

After all, looked at in the light of day, things might have been a whole lot worse. There was always a chance that one of the three or four British firms who still owned sailing ships might buy the old girl. She had a great name; and people were beginning to be a bit sentimental about sailing ships now they were mostly gone. Or one of the big steamship lines might take her on for training purposes. If either of those things happened, it wasn’t likely they would want to put anyone else in command. It was common knowledge, though he said it himself, that no one could get what he could out of her. They would very likely put her into the nitrate trade. Of course it would be a bit of a come-down, still--any port in a storm! He remembered how sick he had been about it the first time she loaded coal at Newcastle. He had felt like going down on his knees and apologizing to her for the outrage! Or, again, there was lumber--plenty of charters were to be had up the West Coast. True, her size was against her; with her reputation and twice her tonnage she wouldn’t have had to wait long for a purchaser. But she would be a good investment, for all that. Why, damn it all, if he had the money loose he’d buy her himself without thinking twice about it! But twenty pounds a month doesn’t leave much margin for such luxuries as buying ships.

He paused half in and half out of his coat, struck by a sudden idea.

His half-brother Edward! Why, he was the very man--just the very man! Rolling in money that he made at that warehouse where he sold staylaces or something up in the City! The blighter was as sharp as a needle--always had been from the time when he used to drive bargains over blood alleys with the other kids at school. He’d see the advantage of a proposition like this fast enough! He could either lend the money on reasonable interest on the security of the ship, or if he liked he could buy her himself and let Broughton manage her for him.

He hurried over the rest of his toilet, swallowed a cup of tea and a rasher old Mike had got ready for him, and started off for the City, all on fire with his new project.

How did that piece of poetry go that Old Featherstone got the ship’s name from? He had read it once, but he wasn’t much at poetry: he couldn’t make much of it.

“Maid of Athens, ere we part----”

That was it! He repeated the line once or twice under his breath, finding in it a new and surprising significance. He ran his hand caressingly along the smoothness of her teak rail, sleek and glossy and warm in the sun as a living thing.

“Maid of Athens, ere we part----”

“There’s a deuce of a lot of water to go under the bridge before it comes to that, old lady!” he said aloud.

By the time he reached the dock gates the proposition had grown so rosy that his only fear was lest someone else should discover its attractiveness and get in ahead of him. By the time he got off the bus in Saint Paul’s Churchyard it seemed to him that he was doing his half-brother a really good turn in allowing him the first chance of so advantageous a business opportunity.

The spruce-looking master mariner who gave in his name at a little hole marked “Inquiries” on the ground-floor of a warehouse just behind the Church of Saint Sempronius Without was a very different person from the haggard being who had glared back at him from the glass an hour ago.

Edward Broughton’s place of business was a large, modern edifice each of whose many ground-floor windows displayed a device representing a nude youth running like hell over the surface of a miniature globe, holding in his extended hand a suit of Elasto Underwear--“Fits where it Hits.” This famous slogan it was which had made Elasto Underwear and Edward Broughton’s fortune; for he was by way of doing very well indeed, was Edward, and had even been spoken of as a possible Lord Mayor. David remembered him in the old days, when he was at home from sea, as a pert little snipe of a youngster with red cheeks and sticking-out eyes.

A stylish youth, looking like a clothed edition of the young gentleman on the placards, ushered him into a small, glass-sided compartment and left him alone there with two little plaster images wearing miniature suits of Elasto Underwear. One was after--a long way after--Michael Angelo’s David, the other (also a long way) after the Venus of Milo.

Broughton looked round him with all the sailorman’s lordly contempt of the ways of traders. He looked out through the glass sides of his cage on long vistas of desks where girls sat at typewriters and between which there scurried young exquisites with sleek hair and champagne-coloured socks--dozens of them, presumably engaged on the one all-important task of distributing Elasto Underwear to the civilized and uncivilized world.

So this was where brother Edward made all his money! Rum sort of show--“Fits where it Hits,” indeed--what a darned silly idea! And how much longer were they going to keep him waiting?

His eyes wandered for the twentieth time to the clock. Half-past eleven--he had been here half an hour. The two underclothed statuettes were beginning to get on his nerves. He should smash ’em if he stopped there much longer.

Issuing forth fuming from his plate-glass seclusion, he stopped one of the hurrying exquisites.

“Does Mr. Broughton know I am here?” he asked.

“Y-yes, sir!” The youth could not have said what made him tack that “sir” on. “You see, he’s very busy in a morning, if you haven’t an appointment. And this week the auditors are here. Could you leave your name and call again?”

“I see. No, I’m afraid I can’t. Will you have the goodness to tell him again, please? Say that Captain Broughton would like to see him--on business--important business.”

The lad hesitated for a moment between dread of his employer and a sense of something masterful, something which demanded obedience, about this brown-faced, quiet stranger. The stranger won, and with a “Very good, sir,” the messenger disappeared among the desks.

Presently he returned. Mr. Broughton would see his visitor now.

David’s half-brother sat in a vast lighted room behind a vast leather-covered table. He still had the round red cheeks and prominent eyes of his youth, but he was almost bald and showed an incipient corporation.

A youth laden with two huge ledgers backed out of the presence as David entered. Like the King, by Jove! Brother Edward was getting into no end of a big pot.

“Oh, good morning, David!” He waved his caller graciously to a seat. “This is quite an unaccustomed honour. I’m afraid you’ve come at rather a busy time--the auditors, and so forth. I hardly ever see anybody except by appointment. But I can give you ten minutes. And now--what can I do for you?”

The words were pleasant enough in a way; but that “What can I do for you?” signified as plainly as if he had said it, “What does this fellow want with me, I wonder?”

There is no enmity so undying as that which dates from the nursery. There is no dislike so unconquerable as that which exists between people who are kin but not kind. Had David Broughton been more of a man of the world he would have known as much; and that while it is true that blood is thicker than water, it is also true that upon occasion it can be more bitter than gall.

The undercurrent of suspicion which was unmistakable beneath the smooth surface of Edward Broughton’s words flicked David on the raw. Perhaps it was that, perhaps the long chilling wait in the plate-glass ante-room had something to do with it. For whatever reason, when he opened his mouth to explain his errand, he found that all his eloquence had deserted him.

He was going to make a mess of it: he knew it as soon as he began to speak. Where were all the telling facts, the effective data he had marshalled so brilliantly as he rode up to the City on the bus? Gone--all gone; he found himself stammering out his case haltingly, baldly, unconvincingly. He could feel it in his bones.

Edward Broughton pursed up his lips, as his half-brother’s last phrase petered out in futility, and blew out his cheeks. He lay back in the large chair and spread his neat little legs out under the large table, placing together his finger-tips--the flattened finger-tips of the money-grubber.

“I--see! I--see! You want me to buy this--er--ship?”

“Well, yes,” David admitted. “I suppose that’s about the length of it, or--or--as I said just now--lend me the money on the security of the ship----”

Edward Broughton studied his nails for a few seconds in silence. He used to bite ’em as a kid, David suddenly remembered, and have bitter aloes put on to stop him.

Then slowly, solemnly, he shook his head.

“No, no! I’m afraid it’s nothing in my line, David.”

“But, dash it all, man!”--Broughton’s temper was beginning to get the better of him. He was annoyed with himself because he felt he had bungled his chances: more because he felt that he had made a mistake in coming to this fellow at all. Ancient family aversions reared their forgotten heads. And the intolerant impatience of the autocrat rose in resentment of opposition. “Dash it all, man, it’s a good investment! I shouldn’t have thought about mentioning it to you if it hadn’t been.” He couldn’t help that sly dig.

“What precisely is your idea of a good investment?”

“Well, I should say it would pay a good five per cent--at a low estimate....”

Edward raised his eyebrows with a superior little smile of indulgent amusement.

“Five per cent. Why, my dear man, I won’t look at anything that doesn’t bring in twenty at least. No, I’m very sorry for you. If I could really see my way to help you I would, for the sake of old times and so on. But one must keep sentiment out of business. It doesn’t do. And, honestly, I can see nothing in it. It isn’t even as if this ship were a fairly new ship. One must move with the times, you know. The late Mr. Featherstone was a very keen man of business, and as you yourself said just now, he’d been selling his ships for years. He knew his business, no doubt, as well as I know mine. And my motto is, ‘Let the cobbler stick to his last!’ His Elasto, eh? Ha ha--not bad that!... No, I’m awfully sorry! I quite see your position. I’ve often thought you were making a big mistake--you ought to have gone in with one of the steamer companies. But I’ll do what I can for you. I’ll put in a word for you, with pleasure. I know one or two directors----”

“Sorry! Help you! Put in a word for you!” What did the little blighter mean? A little snipe whose ear-hole he’d wrung many a time!

Broughton rose, breathing heavily. He restrained with difficulty a fraternal impulse to reach across the leather-covered table and pull the little beggar’s nose.

“Damn it all,” he rapped out, “who asked you for your pity or your advice, I’d like to know? When I want ’em, I won’t forget to ask for ’em, and that’ll be never. I come to you, as I might go to any other business man, with a business proposition. It doesn’t interest you; very well, there’s no more to be said. But as for your advice--_and_ your money--you can keep ’em and be damned to you!”

He passed out between the lines of sniggering, nudging, whispering clerks, his head held high, though his heart was sick with anger and humiliation. So that was what the little beast had thought he was after. Keeping a berth warm for himself. He went hot all over at the thought. He did not even know that he had--for his voice, which he had raised considerably in the heat of the moment, had carried to the farthest corners of the outer office--provided the employees of Elasto, Limited, with one of the most enjoyable moments of their somewhat dull business career.

VII

The “Maid of Athens” left Northfleet six weeks later with a cargo of cement for British Columbia, where she was to load lumber for some port as yet unspecified, in accordance with a charter made before Old Featherstone’s death.

The day had dawned grey and melancholy. A mist of fine, drizzling rain blotted out the low, monotonous shores of the estuary, and the crew--dull and dispirited, the last night’s drink not yet out of them--hove the anchor short with hardly a pretence of a shanty. But a fresh, sharp wind began to blow from the north-east as the light grew, and presently the ship was romping down Channel with everything set.

Broughton stood on the poop beside the Channel pilot, watching the familiar coast of so many landfalls slip rapidly by. Like him, the red-faced, stocky man at his side had watched the ship grow old. His name figured many a time, in Broughton’s stiff, precise handwriting, in those shabby, leather-backed volumes which recorded her unconsidered Odyssey:

“6 a.m. Dull and rainy. Landed Mr. Gardiner, Channel pilot.”

“Start point bearing N. 6 miles. Pilot Gardiner left.”

“Off Dungeness, 3 a.m. Took Mr. Gardiner, pilot, off North Foreland.”

Bald, unadorned entries, dull statements of plain fact set down by plain men with no knowledge of phrase-turning; yet there is more eloquence in them than in all the word-spinnings of literature to those who read aright. What sagas unsung they stand for! What departures fraught with hopes and dreams, with remorse and parting and farewell! What landfalls that were the triumphant climax of long endurance, of patient toil, of cold, hunger, heat, thirst, not to be told in words! What difficulties met and surmounted, what battles fought and won!

The ship glistened white and clean in the morning sun. The men were hard at work washing down decks, ridding her of the last traces of the grime accumulated during her long period in port. Ah, thought Broughton, it was good to be at sea again! The doubts and anxieties of the last six weeks seemed to slip away from him as the river mud slipped from the ship’s keel into the clean Channel tide. The accustomed sights and sounds, the familiar lift and quiver of his ship under him, were like a kind of enchanted circle within which he stood secure against the dark forces of destruction and change. He was a king again in his own little kingdom. The very act of entering up the day’s work in the log book--the taking of sights--all the small duties and ceremonies that make up a shipmaster’s life--helped to create in him an illusion of security. He was like a man awakened from a terrifying dream of judgment, reassuring himself by the sight and touch of common things that the world still goes on its accustomed way. A strange sense of peace and permanency wrapped him round--the peace of an ancient and established order of things seeming so set and rooted that nothing could ever end it. It seemed incredible that all this microcosm should pass away--that the uncounted watches should ever go by and the ship’s faithful bells tell them no more. She appeared to borrow a certain quality of immortality from the winds and the sea and the stars, the eternal things which had been the commonplaces of her wandering years.