Chapter Chapter 14 · ‘I slept little, hurried over my breakfast, and after a slight

. ‘I slept little, hurried over my breakfast, and after a slight

hesitation gave up my early morning visit to my ship. It was really

very wrong of me, because, though my chief mate was an excellent man all

round, he was the victim of such black imaginings that if he did not get

a letter from his wife at the expected time he would go quite distracted

with rage and jealousy, lose all grip on the work, quarrel with all

hands, and either weep in his cabin or develop such a ferocity of temper

as all but drove the crew to the verge of mutiny. The thing had always

seemed inexplicable to me: they had been married thirteen years; I had a

glimpse of her once, and, honestly, I couldn’t conceive a man abandoned

enough to plunge into sin for the sake of such an unattractive person. I

don’t know whether I have not done wrong by refraining from putting

that view before poor Selvin: the man made a little hell on earth for

himself, and I also suffered indirectly, but some sort of, no doubt,

false delicacy prevented me. The marital relations of seamen would make

an interesting subject, and I could tell you instances. . . . However,

this is not the place, nor the time, and we are concerned with Jim--who

was unmarried. If his imaginative conscience or his pride; if all the

extravagant ghosts and austere shades that were the disastrous familiars

of his youth would not let him run away from the block, I, who of course

can’t be suspected of such familiars, was irresistibly impelled to go

and see his head roll off. I wended my way towards the court. I didn’t

hope to be very much impressed or edified, or interested or even

frightened--though, as long as there is any life before one, a jolly

good fright now and then is a salutary discipline. But neither did I

expect to be so awfully depressed. The bitterness of his punishment was

in its chill and mean atmosphere. The real significance of crime is in

its being a breach of faith with the community of mankind, and from

that point of view he was no mean traitor, but his execution was a

hole-and-corner affair. There was no high scaffolding, no scarlet cloth

(did they have scarlet cloth on Tower Hill? They should have had), no

awe-stricken multitude to be horrified at his guilt and be moved to

tears at his fate--no air of sombre retribution. There was, as I walked

along, the clear sunshine, a brilliance too passionate to be consoling,

the streets full of jumbled bits of colour like a damaged kaleidoscope:

yellow, green, blue, dazzling white, the brown nudity of an undraped

shoulder, a bullock-cart with a red canopy, a company of native infantry

in a drab body with dark heads marching in dusty laced boots, a native

policeman in a sombre uniform of scanty cut and belted in patent

leather, who looked up at me with orientally pitiful eyes as though his

migrating spirit were suffering exceedingly from that unforeseen--what

d’ye call ‘em?--avatar--incarnation. Under the shade of a lonely tree

in the courtyard, the villagers connected with the assault case sat in a

picturesque group, looking like a chromo-lithograph of a camp in a book

of Eastern travel. One missed the obligatory thread of smoke in the

foreground and the pack-animals grazing. A blank yellow wall rose behind

overtopping the tree, reflecting the glare. The court-room was sombre,

seemed more vast. High up in the dim space the punkahs were swaying

short to and fro, to and fro. Here and there a draped figure, dwarfed

by the bare walls, remained without stirring amongst the rows of empty

benches, as if absorbed in pious meditation. The plaintiff, who had

been beaten,--an obese chocolate-coloured man with shaved head, one

fat breast bare and a bright yellow caste-mark above the bridge of his

nose,--sat in pompous immobility: only his eyes glittered, rolling

in the gloom, and the nostrils dilated and collapsed violently as he

breathed. Brierly dropped into his seat looking done up, as though

he had spent the night in sprinting on a cinder-track. The pious

sailing-ship skipper appeared excited and made uneasy movements, as

if restraining with difficulty an impulse to stand up and exhort

us earnestly to prayer and repentance. The head of the magistrate,

delicately pale under the neatly arranged hair, resembled the head of a

hopeless invalid after he had been washed and brushed and propped up in

bed. He moved aside the vase of flowers--a bunch of purple with a few

pink blossoms on long stalks--and seizing in both hands a long sheet of

bluish paper, ran his eye over it, propped his forearms on the edge of

the desk, and began to read aloud in an even, distinct, and careless

voice.

‘By Jove! For all my foolishness about scaffolds and heads rolling

off--I assure you it was infinitely worse than a beheading. A heavy

sense of finality brooded over all this, unrelieved by the hope of rest

and safety following the fall of the axe. These proceedings had all the

cold vengefulness of a death-sentence, and the cruelty of a sentence of

exile. This is how I looked at it that morning--and even now I seem to

see an undeniable vestige of truth in that exaggerated view of a common

occurrence. You may imagine how strongly I felt this at the time.

Perhaps it is for that reason that I could not bring myself to admit

the finality. The thing was always with me, I was always eager to take

opinion on it, as though it had not been practically settled: individual

opinion--international opinion--by Jove! That Frenchman’s, for instance.

His own country’s pronouncement was uttered in the passionless and

definite phraseology a machine would use, if machines could speak. The

head of the magistrate was half hidden by the paper, his brow was like

alabaster.

‘There were several questions before the court. The first as to whether

the ship was in every respect fit and seaworthy for the voyage. The

court found she was not. The next point, I remember, was, whether up

to the time of the accident the ship had been navigated with proper and

seamanlike care. They said Yes to that, goodness knows why, and then

they declared that there was no evidence to show the exact cause of

the accident. A floating derelict probably. I myself remember that a

Norwegian barque bound out with a cargo of pitch-pine had been given up

as missing about that time, and it was just the sort of craft that would

capsize in a squall and float bottom up for months--a kind of maritime

ghoul on the prowl to kill ships in the dark. Such wandering corpses are

common enough in the North Atlantic, which is haunted by all the terrors

of the sea,--fogs, icebergs, dead ships bent upon mischief, and long

sinister gales that fasten upon one like a vampire till all the strength

and the spirit and even hope are gone, and one feels like the empty

shell of a man. But there--in those seas--the incident was rare enough

to resemble a special arrangement of a malevolent providence, which,

unless it had for its object the killing of a donkeyman and the bringing

of worse than death upon Jim, appeared an utterly aimless piece of

devilry. This view occurring to me took off my attention. For a time I

was aware of the magistrate’s voice as a sound merely; but in a moment

it shaped itself into distinct words . . . “in utter disregard of their

plain duty,” it said. The next sentence escaped me somehow, and

then . . . “abandoning in the moment of danger the lives and property

confided to their charge” . . . went on the voice evenly, and stopped. A

pair of eyes under the white forehead shot darkly a glance above the

edge of the paper. I looked for Jim hurriedly, as though I had expected

him to disappear. He was very still--but he was there. He sat pink and

fair and extremely attentive. “Therefore, . . .” began the voice

emphatically. He stared with parted lips, hanging upon the words of the

man behind the desk. These came out into the stillness wafted on the

wind made by the punkahs, and I, watching for their effect upon him,

caught only the fragments of official language. . . . “The Court . . .

Gustav So-and-so . . . master . . . native of Germany . . . James

So-and-so . . . mate . . . certificates cancelled.” A silence fell. The

magistrate had dropped the paper, and, leaning sideways on the arm of

his chair, began to talk with Brierly easily. People started to move

out; others were pushing in, and I also made for the door. Outside I

stood still, and when Jim passed me on his way to the gate, I caught at

his arm and detained him. The look he gave discomposed me, as though I

had been responsible for his state he looked at me as if I had been the

embodied evil of life. “It’s all over,” I stammered. “Yes,” he said

thickly. “And now let no man . . .” He jerked his arm out of my grasp. I

watched his back as he went away. It was a long street, and he remained

in sight for some time. He walked rather slow, and straddling his legs a

little, as if he had found it difficult to keep a straight line. Just

before I lost him I fancied he staggered a bit.

‘“Man overboard,” said a deep voice behind me. Turning round, I saw a

fellow I knew slightly, a West Australian; Chester was his name. He,

too, had been looking after Jim. He was a man with an immense girth of

chest, a rugged, clean-shaved face of mahogany colour, and two blunt

tufts of iron-grey, thick, wiry hairs on his upper lip. He had

been pearler, wrecker, trader, whaler too, I believe; in his own

words--anything and everything a man may be at sea, but a pirate. The

Pacific, north and south, was his proper hunting-ground; but he had

wandered so far afield looking for a cheap steamer to buy. Lately he

had discovered--so he said--a guano island somewhere, but its approaches

were dangerous, and the anchorage, such as it was, could not be

considered safe, to say the least of it. “As good as a gold-mine,” he

would exclaim. “Right bang in the middle of the Walpole Reefs, and if

it’s true enough that you can get no holding-ground anywhere in less

than forty fathom, then what of that? There are the hurricanes, too. But

it’s a first-rate thing. As good as a gold-mine--better! Yet there’s not

a fool of them that will see it. I can’t get a skipper or a shipowner

to go near the place. So I made up my mind to cart the blessed stuff

myself.” . . . This was what he required a steamer for, and I knew he

was just then negotiating enthusiastically with a Parsee firm for an

old, brig-rigged, sea-anachronism of ninety horse-power. We had met and

spoken together several times. He looked knowingly after Jim. “Takes

it to heart?” he asked scornfully. “Very much,” I said. “Then he’s no

good,” he opined. “What’s all the to-do about? A bit of ass’s skin. That

never yet made a man. You must see things exactly as they are--if you

don’t, you may just as well give in at once. You will never do anything

in this world. Look at me. I made it a practice never to take anything

to heart.” “Yes,” I said, “you see things as they are.” “I wish I could

see my partner coming along, that’s what I wish to see,” he said. “Know

my partner? Old Robinson. Yes; _the_ Robinson. Don’t _you_ know? The

notorious Robinson. The man who smuggled more opium and bagged more

seals in his time than any loose Johnny now alive. They say he used to

board the sealing-schooners up Alaska way when the fog was so thick that

the Lord God, He alone, could tell one man from another. Holy-Terror

Robinson. That’s the man. He is with me in that guano thing. The best

chance he ever came across in his life.” He put his lips to my ear.

“Cannibal?--well, they used to give him the name years and years ago.

You remember the story? A shipwreck on the west side of Stewart Island;

that’s right; seven of them got ashore, and it seems they did not get

on very well together. Some men are too cantankerous for anything--don’t

know how to make the best of a bad job--don’t see things as they are--as

they _are_, my boy! And then what’s the consequence? Obvious! Trouble,

trouble; as likely as not a knock on the head; and serve ‘em right too.

That sort is the most useful when it’s dead. The story goes that a boat

of Her Majesty’s ship Wolverine found him kneeling on the kelp, naked as

the day he was born, and chanting some psalm-tune or other; light snow

was falling at the time. He waited till the boat was an oar’s length

from the shore, and then up and away. They chased him for an hour up and

down the boulders, till a marihe flung a stone that took him behind

the ear providentially and knocked him senseless. Alone? Of course. But

that’s like that tale of sealing-schooners; the Lord God knows the right

and the wrong of that story. The cutter did not investigate much. They

wrapped him in a boat-cloak and took him off as quick as they could,

with a dark night coming on, the weather threatening, and the ship

firing recall guns every five minutes. Three weeks afterwards he was as

well as ever. He didn’t allow any fuss that was made on shore to upset

him; he just shut his lips tight, and let people screech. It was bad

enough to have lost his ship, and all he was worth besides, without

paying attention to the hard names they called him. That’s the man for

me.” He lifted his arm for a signal to some one down the street. “He’s

got a little money, so I had to let him into my thing. Had to! It

would have been sinful to throw away such a find, and I was cleaned out

myself. It cut me to the quick, but I could see the matter just as

it was, and if I _must_ share--thinks I--with any man, then give me

Robinson. I left him at breakfast in the hotel to come to court, because

I’ve an idea. . . . Ah! Good morning, Captain Robinson. . . . Friend of

mine, Captain Robinson.”

‘An emaciated patriarch in a suit of white drill, a solah topi with a

green-lined rim on a head trembling with age, joined us after crossing

the street in a trotting shuffle, and stood propped with both hands on

the handle of an umbrella. A white beard with amber streaks hung lumpily

down to his waist. He blinked his creased eyelids at me in a bewildered

way. “How do you do? how do you do?” he piped amiably, and tottered. “A

little deaf,” said Chester aside. “Did you drag him over six thousand

miles to get a cheap steamer?” I asked. “I would have taken him twice

round the world as soon as look at him,” said Chester with immense

energy. “The steamer will be the making of us, my lad. Is it my fault

that every skipper and shipowner in the whole of blessed Australasia

turns out a blamed fool? Once I talked for three hours to a man in

Auckland. ‘Send a ship,’ I said, ‘send a ship. I’ll give you half of the

first cargo for yourself, free gratis for nothing--just to make a good

start.’ Says he, ‘I wouldn’t do it if there was no other place on

earth to send a ship to.’ Perfect ass, of course. Rocks, currents, no

anchorage, sheer cliff to lay to, no insurance company would take the

risk, didn’t see how he could get loaded under three years. Ass! I

nearly went on my knees to him. ‘But look at the thing as it is,’ says