Chapter Chapter 6 · ‘The authorities were evidently of the same opinion. The inquiry was not

. ‘The authorities were evidently of the same opinion. The inquiry was not

adjourned. It was held on the appointed day to satisfy the law, and it

was well attended because of its human interest, no doubt. There was no

incertitude as to facts--as to the one material fact, I mean. How the

Patna came by her hurt it was impossible to find out; the court did not

expect to find out; and in the whole audience there was not a man who

cared. Yet, as I’ve told you, all the sailors in the port attended, and

the waterside business was fully represented. Whether they knew it or

not, the interest that drew them here was purely psychological--the

expectation of some essential disclosure as to the strength, the power,

the horror, of human emotions. Naturally nothing of the kind could be

disclosed. The examination of the only man able and willing to face

it was beating futilely round the well-known fact, and the play of

questions upon it was as instructive as the tapping with a hammer on

an iron box, were the object to find out what’s inside. However, an

official inquiry could not be any other thing. Its object was not the

fundamental why, but the superficial how, of this affair.

‘The young chap could have told them, and, though that very thing

was the thing that interested the audience, the questions put to him

necessarily led him away from what to me, for instance, would have

been the only truth worth knowing. You can’t expect the constituted

authorities to inquire into the state of a man’s soul--or is it only of

his liver? Their business was to come down upon the consequences, and

frankly, a casual police magistrate and two nautical assessors are not

much good for anything else. I don’t mean to imply these fellows were

stupid. The magistrate was very patient. One of the assessors was a

sailing-ship skipper with a reddish beard, and of a pious disposition.

Brierly was the other. Big Brierly. Some of you must have heard of Big

Brierly--the captain of the crack ship of the Blue Star line. That’s the

man.

‘He seemed consumedly bored by the honour thrust upon him. He had never

in his life made a mistake, never had an accident, never a mishap,

never a check in his steady rise, and he seemed to be one of those lucky

fellows who know nothing of indecision, much less of self-mistrust.

At thirty-two he had one of the best commands going in the Eastern

trade--and, what’s more, he thought a lot of what he had. There was

nothing like it in the world, and I suppose if you had asked him

point-blank he would have confessed that in his opinion there was not

such another commander. The choice had fallen upon the right man. The

rest of mankind that did not command the sixteen-knot steel steamer Ossa

were rather poor creatures. He had saved lives at sea, had rescued

ships in distress, had a gold chronometer presented to him by the

underwriters, and a pair of binoculars with a suitable inscription from

some foreign Government, in commemoration of these services. He was

acutely aware of his merits and of his rewards. I liked him well enough,

though some I know--meek, friendly men at that--couldn’t stand him at

any price. I haven’t the slightest doubt he considered himself vastly my

superior--indeed, had you been Emperor of East and West, you could not

have ignored your inferiority in his presence--but I couldn’t get up any

real sentiment of offence. He did not despise me for anything I could

help, for anything I was--don’t you know? I was a negligible quantity

simply because I was not _the_ fortunate man of the earth, not Montague

Brierly in command of the Ossa, not the owner of an inscribed gold

chronometer and of silver-mounted binoculars testifying to the

excellence of my seamanship and to my indomitable pluck; not possessed

of an acute sense of my merits and of my rewards, besides the love and

worship of a black retriever, the most wonderful of its kind--for never

was such a man loved thus by such a dog. No doubt, to have all this

forced upon you was exasperating enough; but when I reflected that I was

associated in these fatal disadvantages with twelve hundred millions of

other more or less human beings, I found I could bear my share of his

good-natured and contemptuous pity for the sake of something indefinite

and attractive in the man. I have never defined to myself this

attraction, but there were moments when I envied him. The sting of life

could do no more to his complacent soul than the scratch of a pin to the

smooth face of a rock. This was enviable. As I looked at him, flanking

on one side the unassuming pale-faced magistrate who presided at the

inquiry, his self-satisfaction presented to me and to the world a

surface as hard as granite. He committed suicide very soon after.

‘No wonder Jim’s case bored him, and while I thought with something

akin to fear of the immensity of his contempt for the young man under

examination, he was probably holding silent inquiry into his own case.

The verdict must have been of unmitigated guilt, and he took the secret

of the evidence with him in that leap into the sea. If I understand

anything of men, the matter was no doubt of the gravest import, one of

those trifles that awaken ideas--start into life some thought with which

a man unused to such a companionship finds it impossible to live. I am

in a position to know that it wasn’t money, and it wasn’t drink, and it

wasn’t woman. He jumped overboard at sea barely a week after the end of

the inquiry, and less than three days after leaving port on his outward

passage; as though on that exact spot in the midst of waters he had

suddenly perceived the gates of the other world flung open wide for his

reception.

‘Yet it was not a sudden impulse. His grey-headed mate, a first-rate

sailor and a nice old chap with strangers, but in his relations with

his commander the surliest chief officer I’ve ever seen, would tell the

story with tears in his eyes. It appears that when he came on deck in

the morning Brierly had been writing in the chart-room. “It was ten

minutes to four,” he said, “and the middle watch was not relieved yet of

course. He heard my voice on the bridge speaking to the second mate, and

called me in. I was loth to go, and that’s the truth, Captain Marlow--I

couldn’t stand poor Captain Brierly, I tell you with shame; we never

know what a man is made of. He had been promoted over too many heads,

not counting my own, and he had a damnable trick of making you feel

small, nothing but by the way he said ‘Good morning.’ I never addressed

him, sir, but on matters of duty, and then it was as much as I could do

to keep a civil tongue in my head.” (He flattered himself there. I often

wondered how Brierly could put up with his manners for more than half

a voyage.) “I’ve a wife and children,” he went on, “and I had been ten

years in the Company, always expecting the next command--more fool I.

Says he, just like this: ‘Come in here, Mr. Jones,’ in that swagger

voice of his--‘Come in here, Mr. Jones.’ In I went. ‘We’ll lay down her

position,’ says he, stooping over the chart, a pair of dividers in hand.

By the standing orders, the officer going off duty would have done that

at the end of his watch. However, I said nothing, and looked on while he

marked off the ship’s position with a tiny cross and wrote the date and

the time. I can see him this moment writing his neat figures: seventeen,

eight, four A.M. The year would be written in red ink at the top of

the chart. He never used his charts more than a year, Captain Brierly

didn’t. I’ve the chart now. When he had done he stands looking down

at the mark he had made and smiling to himself, then looks up at me.

‘Thirty-two miles more as she goes,’ says he, ‘and then we shall be

clear, and you may alter the course twenty degrees to the southward.’

‘“We were passing to the north of the Hector Bank that voyage. I said,

‘All right, sir,’ wondering what he was fussing about, since I had to

call him before altering the course anyhow. Just then eight bells were

struck: we came out on the bridge, and the second mate before going off

mentions in the usual way--‘Seventy-one on the log.’ Captain Brierly

looks at the compass and then all round. It was dark and clear, and

all the stars were out as plain as on a frosty night in high latitudes.

Suddenly he says with a sort of a little sigh: ‘I am going aft, and

shall set the log at zero for you myself, so that there can be no

mistake. Thirty-two miles more on this course and then you are safe.

Let’s see--the correction on the log is six per cent. additive; say,

then, thirty by the dial to run, and you may come twenty degrees to

starboard at once. No use losing any distance--is there?’ I had never

heard him talk so much at a stretch, and to no purpose as it seemed

to me. I said nothing. He went down the ladder, and the dog, that was

always at his heels whenever he moved, night or day, followed,

sliding nose first, after him. I heard his boot-heels tap, tap on the

after-deck, then he stopped and spoke to the dog--‘Go back, Rover. On

the bridge, boy! Go on--get.’ Then he calls out to me from the dark,

‘Shut that dog up in the chart-room, Mr. Jones--will you?’

‘“This was the last time I heard his voice, Captain Marlow. These are

the last words he spoke in the hearing of any living human being, sir.”

At this point the old chap’s voice got quite unsteady. “He was afraid

the poor brute would jump after him, don’t you see?” he pursued with

a quaver. “Yes, Captain Marlow. He set the log for me; he--would you

believe it?--he put a drop of oil in it too. There was the oil-feeder

where he left it near by. The boat-swain’s mate got the hose along aft

to wash down at half-past five; by-and-by he knocks off and runs up on

the bridge--‘Will you please come aft, Mr. Jones,’ he says. ‘There’s a

funny thing. I don’t like to touch it.’ It was Captain Brierly’s gold

chronometer watch carefully hung under the rail by its chain.

‘“As soon as my eyes fell on it something struck me, and I knew, sir. My

legs got soft under me. It was as if I had seen him go over; and I could

tell how far behind he was left too. The taffrail-log marked eighteen

miles and three-quarters, and four iron belaying-pins were missing round

the mainmast. Put them in his pockets to help him down, I suppose; but,

Lord! what’s four iron pins to a powerful man like Captain Brierly.

Maybe his confidence in himself was just shook a bit at the last. That’s

the only sign of fluster he gave in his whole life, I should think; but

I am ready to answer for him, that once over he did not try to swim a

stroke, the same as he would have had pluck enough to keep up all day

long on the bare chance had he fallen overboard accidentally. Yes, sir.

He was second to none--if he said so himself, as I heard him once. He

had written two letters in the middle watch, one to the Company and the

other to me. He gave me a lot of instructions as to the passage--I had

been in the trade before he was out of his time--and no end of hints

as to my conduct with our people in Shanghai, so that I should keep the

command of the Ossa. He wrote like a father would to a favourite son,

Captain Marlow, and I was five-and-twenty years his senior and had

tasted salt water before he was fairly breeched. In his letter to the

owners--it was left open for me to see--he said that he had always done

his duty by them--up to that moment--and even now he was not betraying

their confidence, since he was leaving the ship to as competent a seaman

as could be found--meaning me, sir, meaning me! He told them that if

the last act of his life didn’t take away all his credit with them, they

would give weight to my faithful service and to his warm recommendation,

when about to fill the vacancy made by his death. And much more like

this, sir. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It made me feel queer all over,”

went on the old chap, in great perturbation, and squashing something

in the corner of his eye with the end of a thumb as broad as a spatula.

“You would think, sir, he had jumped overboard only to give an unlucky

man a last show to get on. What with the shock of him going in this

awful rash way, and thinking myself a made man by that chance, I was

nearly off my chump for a week. But no fear. The captain of the Pelion

was shifted into the Ossa--came aboard in Shanghai--a little popinjay,

sir, in a grey check suit, with his hair parted in the middle. ‘Aw--I

am--aw--your new captain, Mister--Mister--aw--Jones.’ He was drowned in

scent--fairly stunk with it, Captain Marlow. I dare say it was the look

I gave him that made him stammer. He mumbled something about my natural

disappointment--I had better know at once that his chief officer got

the promotion to the Pelion--he had nothing to do with it, of

course--supposed the office knew best--sorry. . . . Says I, ‘Don’t

you mind old Jones, sir; dam’ his soul, he’s used to it.’ I could see

directly I had shocked his delicate ear, and while we sat at our first

tiffin together he began to find fault in a nasty manner with this and

that in the ship. I never heard such a voice out of a Punch and Judy

show. I set my teeth hard, and glued my eyes to my plate, and held my

peace as long as I could; but at last I had to say something. Up

he jumps tiptoeing, ruffling all his pretty plumes, like a little

fighting-cock. ‘You’ll find you have a different person to deal with

than the late Captain Brierly.’ ‘I’ve found it,’ says I, very glum, but

pretending to be mighty busy with my steak. ‘You are an old ruffian,

Mister--aw--Jones; and what’s more, you are known for an old ruffian

in the employ,’ he squeaks at me. The damned bottle-washers stood about

listening with their mouths stretched from ear to ear. ‘I may be a hard

case,’ answers I, ‘but I ain’t so far gone as to put up with the sight

of you sitting in Captain Brierly’s chair.’ With that I lay down my

knife and fork. ‘You would like to sit in it yourself--that’s where the

shoe pinches,’ he sneers. I left the saloon, got my rags together, and

was on the quay with all my dunnage about my feet before the

stevedores had turned to again. Yes. Adrift--on shore--after ten years’

service--and with a poor woman and four children six thousand miles

off depending on my half-pay for every mouthful they ate. Yes, sir!

I chucked it rather than hear Captain Brierly abused. He left me his

night-glasses--here they are; and he wished me to take care of the

dog--here he is. Hallo, Rover, poor boy. Where’s the captain, Rover?”

The dog looked up at us with mournful yellow eyes, gave one desolate

bark, and crept under the table.

‘All this was taking place, more than two years afterwards, on board

that nautical ruin the Fire-Queen this Jones had got charge of--quite

by a funny accident, too--from Matherson--mad Matherson they generally

called him--the same who used to hang out in Hai-phong, you know, before

the occupation days. The old chap snuffled on--

‘“Ay, sir, Captain Brierly will be remembered here, if there’s no other

place on earth. I wrote fully to his father and did not get a word in

reply--neither Thank you, nor Go to the devil!--nothing! Perhaps they

did not want to know.”

‘The sight of that watery-eyed old Jones mopping his bald head with a

red cotton handkerchief, the sorrowing yelp of the dog, the squalor of

that fly-blown cuddy which was the only shrine of his memory, threw a

veil of inexpressibly mean pathos over Brierly’s remembered figure, the

posthumous revenge of fate for that belief in his own splendour which

had almost cheated his life of its legitimate terrors. Almost! Perhaps

wholly. Who can tell what flattering view he had induced himself to take

of his own suicide?

‘“Why did he commit the rash act, Captain Marlow--can you think?” asked

Jones, pressing his palms together. “Why? It beats me! Why?” He slapped

his low and wrinkled forehead. “If he had been poor and old and in

debt--and never a show--or else mad. But he wasn’t of the kind that

goes mad, not he. You trust me. What a mate don’t know about his skipper

isn’t worth knowing. Young, healthy, well off, no cares. . . . I sit

here sometimes thinking, thinking, till my head fairly begins to buzz.

There was some reason.”

‘“You may depend on it, Captain Jones,” said I, “it wasn’t anything that

would have disturbed much either of us two,” I said; and then, as if

a light had been flashed into the muddle of his brain, poor old Jones

found a last word of amazing profundity. He blew his nose, nodding at me

dolefully: “Ay, ay! neither you nor I, sir, had ever thought so much of

ourselves.”

‘Of course the recollection of my last conversation with Brierly is

tinged with the knowledge of his end that followed so close upon it. I

spoke with him for the last time during the progress of the inquiry. It

was after the first adjournment, and he came up with me in the street.

He was in a state of irritation, which I noticed with surprise, his

usual behaviour when he condescended to converse being perfectly

cool, with a trace of amused tolerance, as if the existence of his

interlocutor had been a rather good joke. “They caught me for that

inquiry, you see,” he began, and for a while enlarged complainingly upon

the inconveniences of daily attendance in court. “And goodness knows how

long it will last. Three days, I suppose.” I heard him out in silence;

in my then opinion it was a way as good as another of putting on side.

“What’s the use of it? It is the stupidest set-out you can imagine,” he

pursued hotly. I remarked that there was no option. He interrupted me

with a sort of pent-up violence. “I feel like a fool all the time.” I

looked up at him. This was going very far--for Brierly--when talking of

Brierly. He stopped short, and seizing the lapel of my coat, gave it

a slight tug. “Why are we tormenting that young chap?” he asked. This

question chimed in so well to the tolling of a certain thought of mine

that, with the image of the absconding renegade in my eye, I answered

at once, “Hanged if I know, unless it be that he lets you.” I was

astonished to see him fall into line, so to speak, with that utterance,

which ought to have been tolerably cryptic. He said angrily, “Why, yes.

Can’t he see that wretched skipper of his has cleared out? What does he

expect to happen? Nothing can save him. He’s done for.” We walked on

in silence a few steps. “Why eat all that dirt?” he exclaimed, with an

oriental energy of expression--about the only sort of energy you can

find a trace of east of the fiftieth meridian. I wondered greatly at the

direction of his thoughts, but now I strongly suspect it was strictly in

character: at bottom poor Brierly must have been thinking of himself.

I pointed out to him that the skipper of the Patna was known to have

feathered his nest pretty well, and could procure almost anywhere the

means of getting away. With Jim it was otherwise: the Government was

keeping him in the Sailors’ Home for the time being, and probably he

hadn’t a penny in his pocket to bless himself with. It costs some money

to run away. “Does it? Not always,” he said, with a bitter laugh, and

to some further remark of mine--“Well, then, let him creep twenty feet

underground and stay there! By heavens! _I_ would.” I don’t know why his

tone provoked me, and I said, “There is a kind of courage in facing

it out as he does, knowing very well that if he went away nobody would

trouble to run after him.” “Courage be hanged!” growled Brierly. “That

sort of courage is of no use to keep a man straight, and I don’t care

a snap for such courage. If you were to say it was a kind of cowardice

now--of softness. I tell you what, I will put up two hundred rupees if

you put up another hundred and undertake to make the beggar clear out

early to-morrow morning. The fellow’s a gentleman if he ain’t fit to

be touched--he will understand. He must! This infernal publicity is too

shocking: there he sits while all these confounded natives, serangs,

lascars, quartermasters, are giving evidence that’s enough to burn a man

to ashes with shame. This is abominable. Why, Marlow, don’t you think,

don’t you feel, that this is abominable; don’t you now--come--as a

seaman? If he went away all this would stop at once.” Brierly said these

words with a most unusual animation, and made as if to reach after his

pocket-book. I restrained him, and declared coldly that the cowardice

of these four men did not seem to me a matter of such great importance.

“And you call yourself a seaman, I suppose,” he pronounced angrily. I

said that’s what I called myself, and I hoped I was too. He heard me

out, and made a gesture with his big arm that seemed to deprive me of

my individuality, to push me away into the crowd. “The worst of it,” he

said, “is that all you fellows have no sense of dignity; you don’t think

enough of what you are supposed to be.”

‘We had been walking slowly meantime, and now stopped opposite the

harbour office, in sight of the very spot from which the immense captain

of the Patna had vanished as utterly as a tiny feather blown away in a

hurricane. I smiled. Brierly went on: “This is a disgrace. We’ve got all

kinds amongst us--some anointed scoundrels in the lot; but, hang it, we

must preserve professional decency or we become no better than so many

tinkers going about loose. We are trusted. Do you understand?--trusted!

Frankly, I don’t care a snap for all the pilgrims that ever came out of

Asia, but a decent man would not have behaved like this to a full cargo

of old rags in bales. We aren’t an organised body of men, and the only

thing that holds us together is just the name for that kind of decency.

Such an affair destroys one’s confidence. A man may go pretty near

through his whole sea-life without any call to show a stiff upper lip.

But when the call comes . . . Aha! . . . If I . . .”

‘He broke off, and in a changed tone, “I’ll give you two hundred rupees

now, Marlow, and you just talk to that chap. Confound him! I wish he had

never come out here. Fact is, I rather think some of my people know his.

The old man’s a parson, and I remember now I met him once when staying

with my cousin in Essex last year. If I am not mistaken, the old

chap seemed rather to fancy his sailor son. Horrible. I can’t do it

myself--but you . . .”

‘Thus, apropos of Jim, I had a glimpse of the real Brierly a few days

before he committed his reality and his sham together to the keeping of

the sea. Of course I declined to meddle. The tone of this last “but

you” (poor Brierly couldn’t help it), that seemed to imply I was no

more noticeable than an insect, caused me to look at the proposal with

indignation, and on account of that provocation, or for some other

reason, I became positive in my mind that the inquiry was a severe

punishment to that Jim, and that his facing it--practically of his own

free will--was a redeeming feature in his abominable case. I hadn’t been

so sure of it before. Brierly went off in a huff. At the time his state

of mind was more of a mystery to me than it is now.

‘Next day, coming into court late, I sat by myself. Of course I could

not forget the conversation I had with Brierly, and now I had them both

under my eyes. The demeanour of one suggested gloomy impudence and of

the other a contemptuous boredom; yet one attitude might not have been

truer than the other, and I was aware that one was not true. Brierly was

not bored--he was exasperated; and if so, then Jim might not have been

impudent. According to my theory he was not. I imagined he was hopeless.

Then it was that our glances met. They met, and the look he gave me was

discouraging of any intention I might have had to speak to him. Upon

either hypothesis--insolence or despair--I felt I could be of no use to

him. This was the second day of the proceedings. Very soon after that

exchange of glances the inquiry was adjourned again to the next day. The

white men began to troop out at once. Jim had been told to stand down

some time before, and was able to leave amongst the first. I saw his

broad shoulders and his head outlined in the light of the door, and

while I made my way slowly out talking with some one--some stranger who

had addressed me casually--I could see him from within the court-room

resting both elbows on the balustrade of the verandah and turning his

back on the small stream of people trickling down the few steps. There

was a murmur of voices and a shuffle of boots.

‘The next case was that of assault and battery committed upon a

money-lender, I believe; and the defendant--a venerable villager with a

straight white beard--sat on a mat just outside the door with his sons,

daughters, sons-in-law, their wives, and, I should think, half the

population of his village besides, squatting or standing around him. A

slim dark woman, with part of her back and one black shoulder bared,

and with a thin gold ring in her nose, suddenly began to talk in a

high-pitched, shrewish tone. The man with me instinctively looked up

at her. We were then just through the door, passing behind Jim’s burly

back.

‘Whether those villagers had brought the yellow dog with them, I don’t

know. Anyhow, a dog was there, weaving himself in and out amongst

people’s legs in that mute stealthy way native dogs have, and my

companion stumbled over him. The dog leaped away without a sound; the

man, raising his voice a little, said with a slow laugh, “Look at that

wretched cur,” and directly afterwards we became separated by a lot of

people pushing in. I stood back for a moment against the wall while the

stranger managed to get down the steps and disappeared. I saw Jim spin

round. He made a step forward and barred my way. We were alone; he

glared at me with an air of stubborn resolution. I became aware I was

being held up, so to speak, as if in a wood. The verandah was empty by

then, the noise and movement in court had ceased: a great silence fell

upon the building, in which, somewhere far within, an oriental voice

began to whine abjectly. The dog, in the very act of trying to sneak in

at the door, sat down hurriedly to hunt for fleas.

‘“Did you speak to me?” asked Jim very low, and bending forward, not so

much towards me but at me, if you know what I mean. I said “No” at once.

Something in the sound of that quiet tone of his warned me to be on my

defence. I watched him. It was very much like a meeting in a wood, only

more uncertain in its issue, since he could possibly want neither my

money nor my life--nothing that I could simply give up or defend with

a clear conscience. “You say you didn’t,” he said, very sombre. “But I

heard.” “Some mistake,” I protested, utterly at a loss, and never taking

my eyes off him. To watch his face was like watching a darkening sky

before a clap of thunder, shade upon shade imperceptibly coming on, the

doom growing mysteriously intense in the calm of maturing violence.

‘“As far as I know, I haven’t opened my lips in your hearing,” I

affirmed with perfect truth. I was getting a little angry, too, at the

absurdity of this encounter. It strikes me now I have never in my life

been so near a beating--I mean it literally; a beating with fists. I

suppose I had some hazy prescience of that eventuality being in the

air. Not that he was actively threatening me. On the contrary, he was

strangely passive--don’t you know? but he was lowering, and, though not

exceptionally big, he looked generally fit to demolish a wall. The

most reassuring symptom I noticed was a kind of slow and ponderous

hesitation, which I took as a tribute to the evident sincerity of my

manner and of my tone. We faced each other. In the court the assault

case was proceeding. I caught the words: “Well--buffalo--stick--in the

greatness of my fear. . . .”

‘“What did you mean by staring at me all the morning?” said Jim at last.

He looked up and looked down again. “Did you expect us all to sit with

downcast eyes out of regard for your susceptibilities?” I retorted

sharply. I was not going to submit meekly to any of his nonsense. He

raised his eyes again, and this time continued to look me straight

in the face. “No. That’s all right,” he pronounced with an air of

deliberating with himself upon the truth of this statement--“that’s all

right. I am going through with that. Only”--and there he spoke a little

faster--“I won’t let any man call me names outside this court. There was

a fellow with you. You spoke to him--oh yes--I know; ‘tis all very fine.

You spoke to him, but you meant me to hear. . . .”

‘I assured him he was under some extraordinary delusion. I had no

conception how it came about. “You thought I would be afraid to resent

this,” he said, with just a faint tinge of bitterness. I was interested

enough to discern the slightest shades of expression, but I was not in

the least enlightened; yet I don’t know what in these words, or perhaps

just the intonation of that phrase, induced me suddenly to make all

possible allowances for him. I ceased to be annoyed at my unexpected

predicament. It was some mistake on his part; he was blundering, and I

had an intuition that the blunder was of an odious, of an unfortunate

nature. I was anxious to end this scene on grounds of decency, just as

one is anxious to cut short some unprovoked and abominable confidence.

The funniest part was, that in the midst of all these considerations

of the higher order I was conscious of a certain trepidation as to

the possibility--nay, likelihood--of this encounter ending in some

disreputable brawl which could not possibly be explained, and would make

me ridiculous. I did not hanker after a three days’ celebrity as the man

who got a black eye or something of the sort from the mate of the Patna.

He, in all probability, did not care what he did, or at any rate would

be fully justified in his own eyes. It took no magician to see he was

amazingly angry about something, for all his quiet and even torpid

demeanour. I don’t deny I was extremely desirous to pacify him at all

costs, had I only known what to do. But I didn’t know, as you may well

imagine. It was a blackness without a single gleam. We confronted each

other in silence. He hung fire for about fifteen seconds, then made a

step nearer, and I made ready to ward off a blow, though I don’t think I

moved a muscle. “If you were as big as two men and as strong as six,”

he said very softly, “I would tell you what I think of you. You . . .”

“Stop!” I exclaimed. This checked him for a second. “Before you tell me

what you think of me,” I went on quickly, “will you kindly tell me what

it is I’ve said or done?” During the pause that ensued he surveyed me

with indignation, while I made supernatural efforts of memory, in which

I was hindered by the oriental voice within the court-room expostulating

with impassioned volubility against a charge of falsehood. Then we spoke

almost together. “I will soon show you I am not,” he said, in a tone

suggestive of a crisis. “I declare I don’t know,” I protested earnestly

at the same time. He tried to crush me by the scorn of his glance.

“Now that you see I am not afraid you try to crawl out of it,” he said.

“Who’s a cur now--hey?” Then, at last, I understood.

‘He had been scanning my features as though looking for a place where

he would plant his fist. “I will allow no man,” . . . he mumbled

threateningly. It was, indeed, a hideous mistake; he had given himself

away utterly. I can’t give you an idea how shocked I was. I suppose he

saw some reflection of my feelings in my face, because his expression

changed just a little. “Good God!” I stammered, “you don’t think

I . . .” “But I am sure I’ve heard,” he persisted, raising his voice for

the first time since the beginning of this deplorable scene. Then with a

shade of disdain he added, “It wasn’t you, then? Very well; I’ll find

the other.” “Don’t be a fool,” I cried in exasperation; “it wasn’t that

at all.” “I’ve heard,” he said again with an unshaken and sombre

perseverance.

‘There may be those who could have laughed at his pertinacity; I didn’t.

Oh, I didn’t! There had never been a man so mercilessly shown up by

his own natural impulse. A single word had stripped him of his

discretion--of that discretion which is more necessary to the decencies

of our inner being than clothing is to the decorum of our body. “Don’t

be a fool,” I repeated. “But the other man said it, you don’t deny

that?” he pronounced distinctly, and looking in my face without

flinching. “No, I don’t deny,” said I, returning his gaze. At last his

eyes followed downwards the direction of my pointing finger. He appeared

at first uncomprehending, then confounded, and at last amazed and scared

as though a dog had been a monster and he had never seen a dog before.

“Nobody dreamt of insulting you,” I said.

‘He contemplated the wretched animal, that moved no more than an effigy:

it sat with ears pricked and its sharp muzzle pointed into the doorway,

and suddenly snapped at a fly like a piece of mechanism.

‘I looked at him. The red of his fair sunburnt complexion deepened

suddenly under the down of his cheeks, invaded his forehead, spread to

the roots of his curly hair. His ears became intensely crimson, and even

the clear blue of his eyes was darkened many shades by the rush of blood

to his head. His lips pouted a little, trembling as though he had been

on the point of bursting into tears. I perceived he was incapable

of pronouncing a word from the excess of his humiliation. From

disappointment too--who knows? Perhaps he looked forward to that

hammering he was going to give me for rehabilitation, for appeasement?

Who can tell what relief he expected from this chance of a row? He

was naive enough to expect anything; but he had given himself away for

nothing in this case. He had been frank with himself--let alone

with me--in the wild hope of arriving in that way at some effective

refutation, and the stars had been ironically unpropitious. He made an

inarticulate noise in his throat like a man imperfectly stunned by a

blow on the head. It was pitiful.

‘I didn’t catch up again with him till well outside the gate. I had even

to trot a bit at the last, but when, out of breath at his elbow, I taxed

him with running away, he said, “Never!” and at once turned at bay. I

explained I never meant to say he was running away from _me_. “From no

man--from not a single man on earth,” he affirmed with a stubborn mien.

I forbore to point out the one obvious exception which would hold good

for the bravest of us; I thought he would find out by himself very soon.

He looked at me patiently while I was thinking of something to say, but

I could find nothing on the spur of the moment, and he began to walk on.

I kept up, and anxious not to lose him, I said hurriedly that I couldn’t

think of leaving him under a false impression of my--of my--I stammered.

The stupidity of the phrase appalled me while I was trying to finish

it, but the power of sentences has nothing to do with their sense or the

logic of their construction. My idiotic mumble seemed to please him. He

cut it short by saying, with courteous placidity that argued an

immense power of self-control or else a wonderful elasticity of

spirits--“Altogether my mistake.” I marvelled greatly at this

expression: he might have been alluding to some trifling occurrence.

Hadn’t he understood its deplorable meaning? “You may well forgive me,”

he continued, and went on a little moodily, “All these staring people in

court seemed such fools that--that it might have been as I supposed.”

‘This opened suddenly a new view of him to my wonder. I looked at him

curiously and met his unabashed and impenetrable eyes. “I can’t put up

with this kind of thing,” he said, very simply, “and I don’t mean to. In

court it’s different; I’ve got to stand that--and I can do it too.”

‘I don’t pretend I understood him. The views he let me have of himself

were like those glimpses through the shifting rents in a thick fog--bits

of vivid and vanishing detail, giving no connected idea of the general

aspect of a country. They fed one’s curiosity without satisfying it;

they were no good for purposes of orientation. Upon the whole he was

misleading. That’s how I summed him up to myself after he left me late

in the evening. I had been staying at the Malabar House for a few days,

and on my pressing invitation he dined with me there.’