Falk: A Reminiscence / Joseph Conrad

Several of us, all more or less connected with the sea, were dining in

a small river-hostelry not more than thirty miles from London, and less

than twenty from that shallow and dangerous puddle to which our coasting

men give the grandiose name of "German Ocean." And through the wide

windows we had a view of the Thames; an enfilading view down the Lower

Hope Reach. But the dinner was execrable, and all the feast was for the

eyes.

That flavour of salt-water which for so many of us had been the very

water of life permeated our talk. He who hath known the bitterness of

the Ocean shall have its taste forever in his mouth. But one or two

of us, pampered by the life of the land, complained of hunger. It was

impossible to swallow any of that stuff. And indeed there was a strange

mustiness in everything. The wooden dining-room stuck out over the mud

of the shore like a lacustrine dwelling; the planks of the floor seemed

rotten; a decrepit old waiter tottered pathetically to and fro before

an antediluvian and worm-eaten sideboard; the chipped plates might have

been disinterred from some kitchen midden near an inhabited lake; and

the chops recalled times more ancient still. They brought forcibly to

one's mind the night of ages when the primeval man, evolving the first

rudiments of cookery from his dim consciousness, scorched lumps of flesh

at a fire of sticks in the company of other good fellows; then, gorged

and happy, sat him back among the gnawed bones to tell his artless tales

of experience--the tales of hunger and hunt--and of women, perhaps!

But luckily the wine happened to be as old as the waiter. So,

comparatively empty, but upon the whole fairly happy, we sat back and

told our artless tales. We talked of the sea and all its works. The

sea never changes, and its works for all the talk of men are wrapped in

mystery. But we agreed that the times were changed. And we talked of old

ships, of sea-accidents, of break-downs, dismastings; and of a man who

brought his ship safe to Liverpool all the way from the River Platte

under a jury rudder. We talked of wrecks, of short rations and of

heroism--or at least of what the newspapers would have called heroism

at sea--a manifestation of virtues quite different from the heroism of

primitive times. And now and then falling silent all together we gazed

at the sights of the river.

A P. & O. boat passed bound down. "One gets jolly good dinners on board

these ships," remarked one of our band. A man with sharp eyes read

out the name on her bows: Arcadia. "What a beautiful model of a ship!"

murmured some of us. She was followed by a small cargo steamer, and the

flag they hauled down aboard while we were looking showed her to be a

Norwegian. She made an awful lot of smoke; and before it had quite blown

away, a high-sided, short, wooden barque, in ballast and towed by a

paddle-tug, appeared in front of the windows. All her hands were forward

busy setting up the headgear; and aft a woman in a red hood, quite alone

with the man at the wheel, paced the length of the poop back and forth,

with the grey wool of some knitting work in her hands.

"German I should think," muttered one. "The skipper has his wife on

board," remarked another; and the light of the crimson sunset all

ablaze behind the London smoke, throwing a glow of Bengal light upon the

barque's spars, faded away from the Hope Reach.

Then one of us, who had not spoken before, a man of over fifty, that had

commanded ships for a quarter of a century, looking after the barque now

gliding far away, all black on the lustre of the river, said:

This reminds me of an absurd episode in my life, now many years ago,

when I got first the command of an iron barque, loading then in a

certain Eastern seaport. It was also the capital of an Eastern kingdom,

lying up a river as might be London lies up this old Thames of ours.

No more need be said of the place; for this sort of thing might have

happened anywhere where there are ships, skippers, tugboats, and orphan

nieces of indescribable splendour. And the absurdity of the episode

concerns only me, my enemy Falk, and my friend Hermann.

There seemed to be something like peculiar emphasis on the words "My

friend Hermann," which caused one of us (for we had just been speaking

of heroism at sea) to say idly and nonchalantly:

"And was this Hermann a hero?"

Not at all, said our grizzled friend. No hero at all. He was a

Schiff-fuhrer: Ship-conductor. That's how they call a Master Mariner

in Germany. I prefer our way. The alliteration is good, and there is

something in the nomenclature that gives to us as a body the sense

of corporate existence: Apprentice, Mate, Master, in the ancient and

honourable craft of the sea. As to my friend Hermann, he might have

been a consummate master of the honourable craft, but he was called

officially Schiff-fuhrer, and had the simple, heavy appearance of a

well-to-do farmer, combined with the good-natured shrewdness of a small

shopkeeper. With his shaven chin, round limbs, and heavy eyelids he did

not look like a toiler, and even less like an adventurer of the sea.

Still, he toiled upon the seas, in his own way, much as a shopkeeper

works behind his counter. And his ship was the means by which he

maintained his growing family.

She was a heavy, strong, blunt-bowed affair, awakening the ideas of

primitive solidity, like the wooden plough of our forefathers. And there

were, about her, other suggestions of a rustic and homely nature. The

extraordinary timber projections which I have seen in no other vessel

made her square stern resemble the tail end of a miller's waggon. But

the four stern ports of her cabin, glazed with six little greenish panes

each, and framed in wooden sashes painted brown, might have been the

windows of a cottage in the country. The tiny white curtains and the

greenery of flower pots behind the glass completed the resemblance. On

one or two occasions when passing under stern I had detected from my

boat a round arm in the act of tilting a watering pot, and the bowed

sleek head of a maiden whom I shall always call Hermann's niece, because

as a matter of fact I've never heard her name, for all my intimacy with

the family.

This, however, sprang up later on. Meantime in common with the rest

of the shipping in that Eastern port, I was left in no doubt as to

Hermann's notions of hygienic clothing. Evidently he believed in

wearing good stout flannel next his skin. On most days little frocks and

pinafores could be seen drying in the mizzen rigging of his ship, or

a tiny row of socks fluttering on the signal halyards; but once a

fortnight the family washing was exhibited in force. It covered the

poop entirely. The afternoon breeze would incite to a weird and flabby

activity all that crowded mass of clothing, with its vague suggestions

of drowned, mutilated and flattened humanity. Trunks without heads waved

at you arms without hands; legs without feet kicked fantastically with

collapsible flourishes; and there were long white garments that, taking

the wind fairly through their neck openings edged with lace, became for

a moment violently distended as by the passage of obese and invisible

bodies. On these days you could make out that ship at a great distance

by the multi-coloured grotesque riot going on abaft her mizzen mast.

She had her berth just ahead of me, and her name was Diana,--Diana not

of Ephesus but of Bremen. This was proclaimed in white letters a foot

long spaced widely across the stern (somewhat like the lettering of a

shop-sign) under the cottage windows. This ridiculously unsuitable name

struck one as an impertinence towards the memory of the most charming

of goddesses; for, apart from the fact that the old craft was physically

incapable of engaging in any sort of chase, there was a gang of four

children belonging to her. They peeped over the rail at passing boats

and occasionally dropped various objects into them. Thus, sometime

before I knew Hermann to speak to, I received on my hat a horrid

rag-doll belonging to Hermann's eldest daughter. However, these

youngsters were upon the whole well behaved. They had fair heads, round

eyes, round little knobby noses, and they resembled their father a good

deal.

This Diana of Bremen was a most innocent old ship, and seemed to know

nothing of the wicked sea, as there are on shore households that know

nothing of the corrupt world. And the sentiments she suggested were

unexceptionable and mainly of a domestic order. She was a home. All

these dear children had learned to walk on her roomy quarter-deck. In

such thoughts there is something pretty, even touching. Their teeth, I

should judge, they had cut on the ends of her running gear. I have

many times observed the baby Hermann (Nicholas) engaged in gnawing the

whipping of the fore-royal brace. Nicholas' favourite place of residence

was under the main fife-rail. Directly he was let loose he would

crawl off there, and the first seaman who came along would bring him,

carefully held aloft in tarry hands, back to the cabin door. I fancy

there must have been a standing order to that effect. In the course of

these transportations the baby, who was the only peppery person in the

ship, tried to smite these stalwart young German sailors on the face.

Mrs. Hermann, an engaging, stout housewife, wore on board baggy blue

dresses with white dots. When, as happened once or twice I caught her at

an elegant little wash-tub rubbing hard on white collars, baby's socks,

and Hermann's summer neckties, she would blush in girlish confusion, and

raising her wet hands greet me from afar with many friendly nods. Her

sleeves would be rolled up to the elbows, and the gold hoop of her

wedding ring glittered among the soapsuds. Her voice was pleasant, she

had a serene brow, smooth bands of very fair hair, and a good-humoured

expression of the eyes. She was motherly and moderately talkative. When

this simple matron smiled, youthful dimples broke out on her fresh broad

cheeks. Hermann's niece on the other hand, an orphan and very silent, I

never saw attempt a smile. This, however, was not gloom on her part but

the restraint of youthful gravity.

They had carried her about with them for the last three years, to help

with the children and be company for Mrs. Hermann, as Hermann mentioned

once to me. It had been very necessary while they were all little, he

had added in a vexed manner. It was her arm and her sleek head that

I had glimpsed one morning, through the stern-windows of the cabin,

hovering over the pots of fuchsias and mignonette; but the first time I

beheld her full length I surrendered to her proportions. They fix her

in my mind, as great beauty, great intelligence, quickness of wit

or kindness of heart might have made some her other woman equally

memorable.

With her it was form and size. It was her physical personality that had

this imposing charm. She might have been witty, intelligent, and kind to

an exceptional degree. I don't know, and this is not to the point. All

I know is that she was built on a magnificent scale. Built is the only

word. She was constructed, she was erected, as it were, with a regal

lavishness. It staggered you to see this reckless expenditure of

material upon a chit of a girl. She was youthful and also perfectly

mature, as though she had been some fortunate immortal. She was heavy

too, perhaps, but that's nothing. It only added to that notion of

permanence. She was barely nineteen. But such shoulders! Such round

arms! Such a shadowing forth of mighty limbs when with three long

strides she pounced across the deck upon the overturned Nicholas--it's

perfectly indescribable! She seemed a good, quiet girl, vigilant as

to Lena's needs, Gustav's tumbles, the state of Carl's dear little

nose--conscientious, hardworking, and all that. But what magnificent

hair she had! Abundant, long, thick, of a tawny colour. It had the sheen

of precious metals. She wore it plaited tightly into one single tress

hanging girlishly down her back and its end reached down to her waist.

The massiveness of it surprised you. On my word it reminded one of a

club. Her face was big, comely, of an unruffled expression. She had a

good complexion, and her blue eyes were so pale that she appeared to

look at the world with the empty white candour of a statue. You could

not call her good-looking. It was something much more impressive.

The simplicity of her apparel, the opulence of her form, her imposing

stature, and the extraordinary sense of vigorous life that seemed to

emanate from her like a perfume exhaled by a flower, made her beautiful

with a beauty of a rustic and olympian order. To watch her reaching up

to the clothes-line with both arms raised high above her head, caused

you to fall a musing in a strain of pagan piety. Excellent Mrs.

Hermann's baggy cotton gowns had some sort of rudimentary frills at neck

and bottom, but this girl's print frocks hadn't even a wrinkle; nothing

but a few straight folds in the skirt falling to her feet, and these,

when she stood still, had a severe and statuesque quality. She was

inclined naturally to be still whether sitting or standing. However, I

don't mean to say she was statuesque. She was too generously alive; but

she could have stood for an allegoric statue of the Earth. I don't mean

the worn-out earth of our possession, but a young Earth, a virginal

planet undisturbed by the vision of a future teeming with the monstrous

forms of life and death, clamorous with the cruel battles of hunger and

thought.

The worthy Hermann himself was not very entertaining, though his English

was fairly comprehensible. Mrs. Hermann, who always let off one speech

at least at me in an hospitable, cordial tone (and in Platt-Deutsch I

suppose) I could not understand. As to their niece, however satisfactory

to look upon (and she inspired you somehow with a hopeful view as to

the prospects of mankind) she was a modest and silent presence, mostly

engaged in sewing, only now and then, as I observed, falling over that

work into a state of maidenly meditation. Her aunt sat opposite her,

sewing also, with her feet propped on a wooden footstool. On the other

side of the deck Hermann and I would get a couple of chairs out of the

cabin and settle down to a smoking match, accompanied at long intervals

by the pacific exchange of a few words. I came nearly every evening.

Hermann I would find in his shirt sleeves. As soon as he returned from

the shore on board his ship he commenced operations by taking off his

coat; then he put on his head an embroidered round cap with a tassel,

and changed his boots for a pair of cloth slippers. Afterwards he smoked

at the cabin-door, looking at his children with an air of civic virtue,

till they got caught one after another and put to bed in various

staterooms. Lastly, we would drink some beer in the cabin, which

was furnished with a wooden table on cross legs, and with black

straight-backed chairs--more like a farm kitchen than a ship's cuddy.

The sea and all nautical affairs seemed very far removed from the

hospitality of this exemplary family.

And I liked this because I had a rather worrying time on board my own

ship. I had been appointed ex-officio by the British Consul to take

charge of her after a man who had died suddenly, leaving for the

guidance of his successor some suspiciously unreceipted bills, a few

dry-dock estimates hinting at bribery, and a quantity of vouchers for

three years' extravagant expenditure; all these mixed up together in a

dusty old violin-case lined with ruby velvet. I found besides a large

account-book, which, when opened, hopefully turned out to my infinite

consternation to be filled with verses--page after page of rhymed

doggerel of a jovial and improper character, written in the neatest

minute hand I ever did see. In the same fiddle-case a photograph of my

predecessor, taken lately in Saigon, represented in front of a garden

view, and in company of a female in strange draperies, an elderly,

squat, rugged man of stern aspect in a clumsy suit of black broadcloth,

and with the hair brushed forward above the temples in a manner

reminding one of a boar's tusks. Of a fiddle, however, the only trace

on board was the case, its empty husk as it were; but of the two last

freights the ship had indubitably earned of late, there were not even

the husks left. It was impossible to say where all that money had gone

to. It wasn't on board. It had not been remitted home; for a letter

from the owners, preserved in a desk evidently by the merest accident,

complained mildly enough that they had not been favoured by a scratch

of the pen for the last eighteen months. There were next to no stores on

board, not an inch of spare rope or a yard of canvas. The ship had been

run bare, and I foresaw no end of difficulties before I could get her

ready for sea.

As I was young then--not thirty yet--I took myself and my troubles very

seriously. The old mate, who had acted as chief mourner at the captain's

funeral, was not particularly pleased at my coming. But the fact is the

fellow was not legally qualified for command, and the Consul was bound,

if at all possible, to put a properly certificated man on board. As to

the second mate, all I can say his name was Tottersen, or something like

that. His practice was to wear on his head, in that tropical climate, a

mangy fur cap. He was, without exception, the stupidest man I had ever

seen on board ship. And he looked it too. He looked so confoundedly

stupid that it was a matter of surprise for me when he answered to his

name.

I drew no great comfort from their company, to say the least of it;

while the prospect of making a long sea passage with those two fellows

was depressing. And my other thoughts in solitude could not be of a

gay complexion. The crew was sickly, the cargo was coming very slow; I

foresaw I would have lots of trouble with the charterers, and doubted

whether they would advance me enough money for the ship's expenses.

Their attitude towards me was unfriendly. Altogether I was not getting

on. I would discover at odd times (generally about midnight) that I

was totally inexperienced, greatly ignorant of business, and hopelessly

unfit for any sort of command; and when the steward had to be taken to

the hospital ill with choleraic symptoms I felt bereaved of the only

decent person at the after end of the ship. He was fully expected to

recover, but in the meantime had to be replaced by some sort of servant.

And on the recommendation of a certain Schomberg, the proprietor of the

smaller of the two hotels in the place, I engaged a Chinaman. Schomberg,

a brawny, hairy Alsatian, and an awful gossip, assured me that it was

all right. "First-class boy that. Came in the suite of his Excellency

Tseng the Commissioner--you know. His Excellency Tseng lodged with me

here for three weeks."

He mouthed the Chinese Excellency at me with great unction, though

the specimen of the "suite" did not seem very promising. At the time,

however, I did not know what an untrustworthy humbug Schomberg was. The

"boy" might have been forty or a hundred and forty for all you could

tell--one of those Chinamen of the death's-head type of face and

completely inscrutable. Before the end of the third day he had revealed

himself as a confirmed opium-smoker, a gambler, a most audacious thief,

and a first-class sprinter. When he departed at the top of his speed

with thirty-two golden sovereigns of my own hard-earned savings it was

the last straw. I had reserved that money in case my difficulties came

to the worst. Now it was gone I felt as poor and naked as a fakir. I

clung to my ship, for all the bother she caused me, but what I could not

bear were the long lonely evenings in her cuddy, where the atmosphere,

made smelly by a leaky lamp, was agitated by the snoring of the mate.

That fellow shut himself up in his stuffy cabin punctually at eight, and

made gross and revolting noises like a water-logged trump. It was odious

not to be able to worry oneself in comfort on board one's own ship.

Everything in this world, I reflected, even the command of a nice little

barque, may be made a delusion and a snare for the unwary spirit of

pride in man.

From such reflections I was glad to make any escape on board that Bremen

Diana. There apparently no whisper of the world's iniquities had ever

penetrated. And yet she lived upon the wide sea: and the sea tragic

and comic, the sea with its horrors and its peculiar scandals, the sea

peopled by men and ruled by iron necessity is indubitably a part of the

world. But that patriarchal old tub, like some saintly retreat, echoed

nothing of it. She was world proof. Her venerable innocence apparently

had put a restraint on the roaring lusts of the sea. And yet I have

known the sea too long to believe in its respect for decency. An

elemental force is ruthlessly frank. It may, of course, have been

Hermann's skilful seamanship, but to me it looked as if the allied

oceans had refrained from smashing these high bulwarks, unshipping

the lumpy rudder, frightening the children, and generally opening this

family's eyes out of sheer reticence. It looked like reticence. The

ruthless disclosure was in the end left for a man to make; a man strong

and elemental enough and driven to unveil some secrets of the sea by the

power of a simple and elemental desire.

This, however, occurred much later, and meantime I took sanctuary in

that serene old ship early every evening. The only person on board that

seemed to be in trouble was little Lena, and in due course I perceived

that the health of the rag-doll was more than delicate. This object led

a sort of "in extremis" existence in a wooden box placed against the

starboard mooring-bitts, tended and nursed with the greatest sympathy

and care by all the children, who greatly enjoyed pulling long faces and

moving with hushed footsteps. Only the baby--Nicholas--looked on with a

cold, ruffianly leer, as if he had belonged to another tribe altogether.

Lena perpetually sorrowed over the box, and all of them were in deadly

earnest. It was wonderful the way these children would work up their

compassion for that bedraggled thing I wouldn't have touched with a pair

of tongs. I suppose they were exercising and developing their racial

sentimentalism by the means of that dummy. I was only surprised that

Mrs. Hermann let Lena cherish and hug that bundle of rags to that

extent, it was so disreputably and completely unclean. But Mrs. Hermann

would raise her fine womanly eyes from her needlework to look on with

amused sympathy, and did not seen to see it, somehow, that this

object of affection was a disgrace to the ship's purity. Purity, not

cleanliness, is the word. It was pushed so far that I seemed to detect

in this too a sentimental excess, as if dirt had been removed in

very love. It is impossible to give you an idea of such a meticulous

neatness. It was as if every morning that ship had been arduously

explored with--with toothbrushes. Her very bowsprit three times a week

had its toilette made with a cake of soap and a piece of soft flannel.

Arrayed--I _must_ say arrayed--arrayed artlessly in dazzling white paint

as to wood and dark green as to ironwork the simple-minded distribution

of these colours evoked the images of simple-minded peace, of arcadian

felicity; and the childish comedy of disease and sorrow struck me

sometimes as an abominably real blot upon that ideal state.

I enjoyed it greatly, and on my part I brought a little mild excitement

into it. Our intimacy arose from the pursuit of that thief. It was in

the evening, and Hermann, who, contrary to his habits, had stayed on

shore late that day, was extricating himself backwards out of a little

gharry on the river bank, opposite his ship, when the hunt passed.

Realising the situation as though he had eyes in his shoulder-blades, he

joined us with a leap and took the lead. The Chinaman fled silent like

a rapid shadow on the dust of an extremely oriental road. I followed. A

long way in the rear my mate whooped like a savage. A young moon threw

a bashful light on a plain like a monstrous waste ground: the

architectural mass of a Buddhist temple far away projected itself

in dead black on the sky. We lost the thief of course; but in my

disappointment I had to admire Hermann's presence of mind. The velocity

that stodgy man developed in the interests of a complete stranger earned

my warm gratitude--there was something truly cordial in his exertions.

He seemed as vexed as myself at our failure, and would hardly listen to

my thanks. He said it was "nothings," and invited me on the spot to

come on board his ship and drink a glass of beer with him. We poked

sceptically for a while amongst the bushes, peered without conviction

into a ditch or two. There was not a sound: patches of slime glimmered

feebly amongst the reeds. Slowly we trudged back, drooping under the

thin sickle of the moon, and I heard him mutter to himself, "Himmel!

Zwei und dreissig Pfund!" He was impressed by the figure of my loss. For

a long time we had ceased to hear the mate's whoops and yells.

Then he said to me, "Everybody has his troubles," and as we went on

remarked that he would never have known anything of mine hadn't he by an

extraordinary chance been detained on shore by Captain Falk. He didn't

like to stay late ashore--he added with a sigh. The something doleful in

his tone I put to his sympathy with my misfortune, of course.

On board the Diana Mrs. Hermann's fine eyes expressed much interest and

commiseration. We had found the two women sewing face to face under the

open skylight in the strong glare of the lamp. Hermann walked in first,

starting in the very doorway to pull off his coat, and encouraging

me with loud, hospitable ejaculations: "Come in! This way! Come in,

captain!" At once, coat in hand, he began to tell his wife all about

it. Mrs. Hermann put the palms of her plump hands together; I smiled

and bowed with a heavy heart: the niece got up from her sewing to

bring Hermann's slippers and his embroidered calotte, which he assumed

pontifically, talking (about me) all the time. Billows of white stuff

lay between the chairs on the cabin floor; I caught the words "Zwei und

dreissig Pfund" repeated several times, and presently came the beer,

which seemed delicious to my throat, parched with running and the

emotions of the chase.

I didn't get away till well past midnight, long after the women had

retired. Hermann had been trading in the East for three years or more,

carrying freights of rice and timber mostly. His ship was well known in

all the ports from Vladivostok to Singapore. She was his own property.

The profits had been moderate, but the trade answered well enough while

the children were small yet. In another year or so he hoped he would

be able to sell the old Diana to a firm in Japan for a fair price. He

intended to return home, to Bremen, by mail boat, second class, with

Mrs. Hermann and the children. He told me all this stolidly, with slow

puffs at his pipe. I was sorry when knocking the ashes out he began

to rub his eyes. I would have sat with him till morning. What had I to

hurry on board my own ship for? To face the broken rifled drawer in my

state-room. Ugh! The very thought made me feel unwell.

I became their daily guest, as you know. I think that Mrs. Hermann from

the first looked upon me as a romantic person. I did not, of course,

tear my hair _coram populo_ over my loss, and she took it for lordly

indifference. Afterwards, I daresay, I did tell them some of my

adventures--such as they were--and they marvelled greatly at the extent

of my experience. Hermann would translate what he thought the most

striking passages. Getting up on his legs, and as if delivering a

lecture on a phenomenon, he addressed himself, with gestures, to the two

women, who would let their sewing sink slowly on their laps. Meantime

I sat before a glass of Hermann's beer, trying to look modest. Mrs.

Hermann would glance at me quickly, emit slight "Ach's!" The girl never

made a sound. Never. But she too would sometimes raise her pale eyes

to look at me in her unseeing gentle way. Her glance was by no means

stupid; it beamed out soft and diffuse as the moon beams upon a

landscape--quite differently from the scrutinising inspection of the

stars. You were drowned in it, and imagined yourself to appear blurred.

And yet this same glance when turned upon Christian Falk must have been

as efficient as the searchlight of a battle-ship.

Falk was the other assiduous visitor on board, but from his behaviour

he might have been coming to see the quarter-deck capstan. He certainly

used to stare at it a good deal when keeping us company outside the

cabin door, with one muscular arm thrown over the back of the chair, and

his big shapely legs, in very tight white trousers, extended far out and

ending in a pair of black shoes as roomy as punts. On arrival he would

shake Hermann's hand with a mutter, bow to the women, and take up his

careless and misanthropic attitude by our side. He departed abruptly,

with a jump, going through the performance of grunts, handshakes, bow,

as if in a panic. Sometimes, with a sort of discreet and convulsive

effort, he approached the women and exchanged a few low words with them,

half a dozen at most. On these occasions Hermann's usual stare became

positively glassy and Mrs. Hermann's kind countenance would colour up.

The girl herself never turned a hair.

Falk was a Dane or perhaps a Norwegian, I can't tell now. At all events

he was a Scandinavian of some sort, and a bloated monopolist to boot.

It is possible he was unacquainted with the word, but he had a clear

perception of the thing itself. His tariff of charges for towing ships

in and out was the most brutally inconsiderate document of the sort I

had ever seen. He was the commander and owner of the only tug-boat on

the river, a very trim white craft of 150 tons or more, as elegantly

neat as a yacht, with a round wheel-house rising like a glazed turret

high above her sharp bows, and with one slender varnished pole mast

forward. I daresay there are yet a few shipmasters afloat who remember

Falk and his tug very well. He extracted his pound and a half of

flesh from each of us merchant-skippers with an inflexible sort of

indifference which made him detested and even feared. Schomberg used to

remark: "I won't talk about the fellow. I don't think he has six drinks

from year's end to year's end in my place. But my advice is, gentlemen,

don't you have anything to do with him, if you can help it."

This advice, apart from unavoidable business relations, was easy to

follow because Falk intruded upon no one. It seems absurd to compare a

tugboat skipper to a centaur: but he reminded me somehow of an engraving

in a little book I had as a boy, which represented centaurs at a stream,

and there was one, especially in the foreground, prancing bow and arrows

in hand, with regular severe features and an immense curled wavy beard,

flowing down his breast. Falk's face reminded me of that centaur.

Besides, he was a composite creature. Not a man-horse, it is true, but

a man-boat. He lived on board his tug, which was always dashing up and

down the river from early morn till dewy eve.

In the last rays of the setting sun, you could pick out far away down

the reach his beard borne high up on the white structure, foaming up

stream to anchor for the night. There was the white-clad man's body, and

the rich brown patch of the hair, and nothing below the waist but the

'thwart-ship white lines of the bridge-screens, that lead the eye to the

sharp white lines of the bows cleaving the muddy water of the river.

Separated from his boat to me at least he seemed incomplete. The tug

herself without his head and torso on the bridge looked mutilated as it

were. But he left her very seldom. All the time I remained in harbour

I saw him only twice on shore. On the first occasion it was at my

charterers, where he came in misanthropically to get paid for towing out

a French barque the day before. The second time I could hardly believe

my eyes, for I beheld him reclining under his beard in a cane-bottomed

chair in the billiard-room of Schomberg's hotel.

It was very funny to see Schomberg ignoring him pointedly. The

artificiality of it contrasted strongly with Falk's natural unconcern.

The big Alsatian talked loudly with his other customers, going from one

little table to the other, and passing Falk's place of repose with his

eyes fixed straight ahead. Falk sat there with an untouched glass at his

elbow. He must have known by sight and name every white man in the room,

but he never addressed a word to anybody. He acknowledged my presence by

a drop of his eyelids, and that was all. Sprawling there in the chair,

he would, now and again, draw the palms of both his hands down his face,

giving at the same time a slight, almost imperceptible, shudder.

It was a habit he had, and of course I was perfectly familiar with it,

since you could not remain an hour in his company without being made to

wonder at such a movement breaking some long period of stillness. It was

a passionate and inexplicable gesture. He used to make it at all sorts

of times; as likely as not after he had been listening to little Lena's

chatter about the suffering doll, for instance. The Hermann children

always besieged him about his legs closely, though, in a gentle way, he

shrank from them a little. He seemed, however, to feel a great affection

for the whole family. For Hermann himself especially. He sought his

company. In this case, for instance, he must have been waiting for him,

because as soon as he appeared Falk rose hastily, and they went out

together. Then Schomberg expounded in my hearing to three or four people

his theory that Falk was after Captain Hermann's niece, and asserted

confidently that nothing would come of it. It was the same last year

when Captain Hermann was loading here, he said.

Naturally, I did not believe Schomberg, but I own that for a time I

observed closely what went on. All I discovered was some impatience on

Hermann's part. At the sight of Falk, stepping over the gangway, the

excellent man would begin to mumble and chew between his teeth something

that sounded like German swear-words. However, as I've said, I'm not

familiar with the language, and Hermann's soft, round-eyed countenance

remained unchanged. Staring stolidly ahead he greeted him with, "Wie

gehts," or in English, "How are you?" with a throaty enunciation. The

girl would look up for an instant and move her lips slightly: Mrs.

Hermann let her hands rest on her lap to talk volubly to him for a

minute or so in her pleasant voice before she went on with her sewing

again. Falk would throw himself into a chair, stretch his big legs, as

like as not draw his hands down his face passionately. As to myself, he

was not pointedly impertinent: it was rather as though he could not be

bothered with such trifles as my existence; and the truth is that being

a monopolist he was under no necessity to be amiable. He was sure to get

his own extortionate terms out of me for towage whether he frowned

or smiled. As a matter of fact, he did neither: but before many days

elapsed he managed to astonish me not a little and to set Schomberg's

tongue clacking more than ever.

It came about in this way. There was a shallow bar at the mouth of the

river which ought to have been kept down, but the authorities of the

State were piously busy gilding afresh the great Buddhist Pagoda just

then, and I suppose had no money to spare for dredging operations. I

don't know how it may be now, but at the time I speak of that sandbank

was a great nuisance to the shipping. One of its consequences was that

vessels of a certain draught of water, like Hermann's or mine, could not

complete their loading in the river. After taking in as much as possible

of their cargo, they had to go outside to fill up. The whole procedure

was an unmitigated bore. When you thought you had as much on board as

your ship could carry safely over the bar, you went and gave notice to

your agents. They, in their turn, notified Falk that so-and-so was ready

to go out. Then Falk (ostensibly when it fitted in with his other work,

but, if the truth were known, simply when his arbitrary spirit moved

him), after ascertaining carefully in the office that there was enough

money to meet his bill, would come along unsympathetically, glaring

at you with his yellow eyes from the bridge, and would drag you out

dishevelled as to rigging, lumbered as to the decks, with unfeeling

haste, as if to execution. And he would force you too to take the end of

his own wire hawser, for the use of which there was of course an extra

charge. To your shouted remonstrances against that extortion this

towering trunk with one hand on the engine-room telegraph only shook its

bearded head above the splash, the racket, and the clouds of smoke

in which the tug, backing and filling in the smother of churning

paddle-wheels behaved like a ferocious and impatient creature. He had

her manned by the cheekiest gang of lascars I ever did see, whom he

allowed to bawl at you insolently, and, once fast, he plucked you out

of your berth as if he did not care what he smashed. Eighteen miles down

the river you had to go behind him, and then three more along the

coast to where a group of uninhabited rocky islets enclosed a sheltered

anchorage. There you would have to lie at single anchor with your naked

spars showing to seaward over these barren fragments of land scattered

upon a very intensely blue sea. There was nothing to look at besides but

a bare coast, the muddy edge of the brown plain with the sinuosities

of the river you had left, traced in dull green, and the Great Pagoda

uprising lonely and massive with shining curves and pinnacles like the

gorgeous and stony efflorescence of tropical rocks. You had nothing to

do but to wait fretfully for the balance of your cargo, which was sent

out of the river with the greatest irregularity. And it was open to

you to console yourself with the thought that, after all, this stage

of bother meant that your departure from these shores was indeed

approaching at last.

We both had to go through that stage, Hermann and I, and there was a

sort of tacit emulation between the ships as to which should be ready

first. We kept on neck and neck almost to the finish, when I won

the race by going personally to give notice in the forenoon; whereas

Hermann, who was very slow in making up his mind to go ashore, did not

get to the agents' office till late in the day. They told him there that

my ship was first on turn for next morning, and I believe he told them

he was in no hurry. It suited him better to go the day after.

That evening, on board the Diana, he sat with his plump knees well

apart, staring and puffing at the curved mouthpiece of his pipe.

Presently he spoke with some impatience to his niece about putting the

children to bed. Mrs. Hermann, who was talking to Falk, stopped short

and looked at her husband uneasily, but the girl got up at once and

drove the children before her into the cabin. In a little while Mrs.

Hermann had to leave us to quell what, from the sounds inside, must have

been a dangerous mutiny. At this Hermann grumbled to himself. For half

an hour longer Falk left alone with us fidgeted on his chair, sighed

lightly, then at last, after drawing his hands down his face, got up,

and as if renouncing the hope of making himself understood (he hadn't

opened his mouth once) he said in English: "Well. . . . Good night,

Captain Hermann." He stopped for a moment before my chair and looked

down fixedly; I may even say he glared: and he went so far as to make a

deep noise in his throat. There was in all this something so marked

that for the first time in our limited intercourse of nods and grunts he

excited in me something like interest. But next moment he disappointed

me--for he strode away hastily without a nod even.

His manner was usually odd it is true, and I certainly did not pay much

attention to it; but that sort of obscure intention, which seemed to

lurk in his nonchalance like a wary old carp in a pond, had never before

come so near the surface. He had distinctly aroused my expectations. I

would have been unable to say what it was I expected, but at all events

I did not expect the absurd developments he sprung upon me no later than

the break of the very next day.

I remember only that there was, on that evening, enough point in his

behaviour to make me, after he had fled, wonder audibly what he might

mean. To this Hermann, crossing his legs with a swing and settling

himself viciously away from me in his chair, said: "That fellow don't

know himself what he means."

There might have been some insight in such a remark. I said nothing,

and, still averted, he added: "When I was here last year he was just the

same." An eruption of tobacco smoke enveloped his head as if his temper

had exploded like gunpowder.

I had half a mind to ask him point blank whether he, at least, didn't

know why Falk, a notoriously unsociable man, had taken to visiting his

ship with such assiduity. After all, I reflected suddenly, it was a

most remarkable thing. I wonder now what Hermann would have said. As it

turned out he didn't let me ask. Forgetting all about Falk apparently,

he started a monologue on his plans for the future: the selling of the

ship, the going home; and falling into a reflective and calculating

mood he mumbled between regular jets of smoke about the expense. The

necessity of disbursing passage money for all his tribe seemed to

disturb him in a manner that was the more striking because otherwise

he gave no signs of a miserly disposition. And yet he fussed over the

prospect of that voyage home in a mail boat like a sedentary grocer

who has made up his mind to see the world. He was racially thrifty I

suppose, and for him there must have been a great novelty in finding

himself obliged to pay for travelling--for sea travelling which was the

normal state of life for the family--from the very cradle for most of

them. I could see he grudged prospectively every single shilling which

must be spent so absurdly. It was rather funny. He would become doleful

over it, and then again, with a fretful sigh, he would suppose there

was nothing for it now but to take three second-class tickets--and there

were the four children to pay for besides. A lot of money that to spend

at once. A big lot of money.

I sat with him listening (not for the first time) to these

heart-searchings till I grew thoroughly sleepy, and then I left him and

turned in on board my ship. At daylight I was awakened by a yelping of

shrill voices, accompanied by a great commotion in the water, and the

short, bullying blasts of a steam-whistle. Falk with his tug had come

for me.

I began to dress. It was remarkable that the answering noise on board my

ship together with the patter of feet above my head ceased suddenly. But

I heard more remote guttural cries which seemed to express surprise and

annoyance. Then the voice of my mate reached me howling expostulations

to somebody at a distance. Other voices joined, apparently indignant;

a chorus of something that sounded like abuse replied. Now and then the

steam-whistle screeched.

Altogether that unnecessary uproar was distracting, but down there in my

cabin I took it calmly. In another moment, I thought, I should be going

down that wretched river, and in another week at the most I should be

totally quit of the odious place and all the odious people in it.

Greatly cheered by the idea, I seized the hair-brushes and looking at

myself in the glass began to use them. Suddenly a hush fell upon the

noise outside, and I heard (the ports of my cabin were thrown open)--I

heard a deep calm voice, not on board my ship, however, hailing

resolutely in English, but with a strong foreign twang, "Go ahead!"

There may be tides in the affairs of men which taken at the flood . . .

and so on. Personally I am still on the look out for that important

turn. I am, however, afraid that most of us are fated to flounder for

ever in the dead water of a pool whose shores are arid indeed. But

I know that there are often in men's affairs unexpectedly--even

irrationally--illuminating moments when an otherwise insignificant

sound, perhaps only some perfectly commonplace gesture, suffices

to reveal to us all the unreason, all the fatuous unreason, of our

complacency. "Go ahead" are not particularly striking words even when

pronounced with a foreign accent; yet they petrified me in the very

act of smiling at myself in the glass. And then, refusing to believe my

ears, but already boiling with indignation, I ran out of the cabin and

up on deck.

It was incredibly true. It was perfectly true. I had no eyes for

anything but the Diana. It was she, then, was being taken away. She was

already out of her berth and shooting athwart the river. "The way this

loonatic plucked that ship out is a caution," said the awed voice of my

mate close to my ear. "Hey! Hallo! Falk! Hermann! What's this infernal

trick?" I yelled in a fury.

Nobody heard me. Falk certainly could not hear me. His tug was turning

at full speed away under the other bank. The wire hawser between her and

the Diana, stretched as taut as a harp-string, vibrated alarmingly.

The high black craft careened over to the awful strain. A loud crack

came out of her, followed by the tearing and splintering of wood.

"There!" said the awed voice in my ear. "He's carried away their towing

chock." And then, with enthusiasm, "Oh! Look! Look! sir, Look! at them

Dutchmen skipping out of the way on the forecastle. I hope to goodness

he'll break a few of their shins before he's done with 'em."

I yelled my vain protests. The rays of the rising sun coursing level

along the plain warmed my back, but I was hot enough with rage. I

could not have believed that a simple towing operation could suggest so

plainly the idea of abduction, of rape. Falk was simply running off with

the Diana.

The white tug careered out into the middle of the river. The red floats

of her paddle-wheels revolving with mad rapidity tore up the whole reach

into foam. The Diana in mid-stream waltzed round with as much grace

as an old barn, and flew after her ravisher. Through the ragged fog of

smoke driving headlong upon the water I had a glimpse of Falk's square

motionless shoulders under a white hat as big as a cart-wheel, of his

red face, his yellow staring eyes, his great beard. Instead of keeping

a lookout ahead, he was deliberately turning his back on the river to

glare at his tow. The tall heavy craft, never so used before in her

life, seemed to have lost her senses; she took a wild sheer against her

helm, and for a moment came straight at us, menacing and clumsy, like

a runaway mountain. She piled up a streaming, hissing, boiling wave

half-way up her blunt stem, my crew let out one great howl,--and then we

held our breaths. It was a near thing. But Falk had her! He had her in

his clutch. I fancied I could hear the steel hawser ping as it surged

across the Diana's forecastle, with the hands on board of her bolting

away from it in all directions. It was a near thing. Hermann, with his

hair rumpled, in a snuffy flannel shirt and a pair of mustard-coloured

trousers, had rushed to help with the wheel. I saw his terrified round

face; I saw his very teeth uncovered by a sort of ghastly fixed grin;

and in a great leaping tumult of water between the two ships the Diana

whisked past so close that I could have flung a hair-brush at his head,

for, it seems, I had kept them in my hands all the time. Meanwhile

Mrs. Hermann sat placidly on the skylight, with a woollen shawl on

her shoulders. The excellent woman in response to my indignant

gesticulations fluttered a handkerchief, nodding and smiling in the

kindest way imaginable. The boys, only half-dressed, were jumping about

the poop in great glee, displaying their gaudy braces; and Lena in a

short scarlet petticoat, with peaked elbows and thin bare arms, nursed

the rag-doll with devotion. The whole family passed before my sight as

if dragged across a scene of unparalleled violence. The last I saw was

Hermann's niece with the baby Hermann in her arms standing apart from

the others. Magnificent in her close-fitting print frock she displayed

something so commanding in the manifest perfection of her figure that

the sun seemed to be rising for her alone. The flood of light brought

out the opulence of her form and the vigour of her youth in a glorifying

way. She went by perfectly motionless and as if lost in meditation; only

the hem of her skirt stirred in the draught; the sun rays broke on her

sleek tawny hair; that bald-headed ruffian, Nicholas, was whacking her

on the shoulder. I saw his tiny fat arm rise and fall in a workmanlike

manner. And then the four cottage windows of the Diana came into view

retreating swiftly down the river. The sashes were up, and one of the

white calico curtains was fluttered straight out like a streamer above

the agitated water of the wake.

To be thus tricked out of one's turn was an unheard of occurrence. In

my agent's office, where I went to complain at once, they protested with

apologies they couldn't understand how the mistake arose: but Schomberg

when I dropped in later to get some tiffin, though surprised to see me,

was perfectly ready with an explanation. I found him seated at the end

of a long narrow table, facing his wife--a scraggy little woman, with

long ringlets and a blue tooth, who smiled abroad stupidly and looked

frightened when you spoke to her. Between them a waggling punkah fanned

twenty cane-bottomed chairs and two rows of shiny plates. Three

Chinamen in white jackets loafed with napkins in their hands around that

desolation. Schomberg's pet table d'hote was not much of a success that

day. He was feeding himself ferociously and seemed to overflow with

bitterness.

He began by ordering in a brutal voice the chops to be brought back for

me, and turning in his chair: "Mistake they told you? Not a bit of it!

Don't you believe it for a moment, captain! Falk isn't a man to make

mistakes unless on purpose." His firm conviction was that Falk had been

trying all along to curry favour on the cheap with Hermann. "On the

cheap--mind you! It doesn't cost him a cent to put that insult upon you,

and Captain Hermann gets in a day ahead of your ship. Time's money! Eh?

You are very friendly with Captain Hermann I believe, but a man is bound

to be pleased at any little advantage he may get. Captain Hermann is a

good business man, and there's no such thing as a friend in business. Is

there?" He leaned forward and began to cast stealthy glances as usual.

"But Falk is, and always was, a miserable fellow. I would despise him."

I muttered, grumpily, that I had no particular respect for Falk.

"I would despise him," he insisted, with an appearance of anxiety which

would have amused me if I had not been fathoms deep in discontent. To a

young man fairly conscientious and as well-meaning as only the young

man can be, the current ill-usage of life comes with a peculiar cruelty.

Youth that is fresh enough to believe in guilt, in innocence, and in

itself, will always doubt whether it have not perchance deserved its

fate. Sombre of mind and without appetite, I struggled with the

chop while Mrs. Schomberg sat with her everlasting stupid grin and

Schomberg's talk gathered way like a slide of rubbish.

"Let me tell you. It's all about that girl. I don't know what Captain

Hermann expects, but if he asked me I could tell him something about

Falk. He's a miserable fellow. That man is a perfect slave. That's what

I call him. A slave. Last year I started this table d'hote, and sent

cards out--you know. You think he had one meal in the house? Give the

thing a trial? Not once. He has got hold now of a Madras cook--a blamed

fraud that I hunted out of my cookhouse with a rattan. He was not fit to

cook for white men. No, not for the white men's dogs either; but, see,

any damned native that can boil a pot of rice is good enough for Mr.

Falk. Rice and a little fish he buys for a few cents from the fishing

boats outside is what he lives on. You would hardly credit it--eh? A

white man, too. . . ."

He wiped his lips, using the napkin with indignation, and looking at me.

It flashed through my mind in the midst of my depression that if all the

meat in the town was like these table d'hote chops, Falk wasn't so far

wrong. I was on the point of saying this, but Schomberg's stare was

intimidating. "He's a vegetarian, perhaps," I murmured instead.

"He's a miser. A miserable miser," affirmed the hotel-keeper with great

force. "The meat here is not so good as at home--of course. And dear

too. But look at me. I only charge a dollar for the tiffin, and one

dollar and fifty cents for the dinner. Show me anything cheaper. Why am

I doing it? There's little profit in this game. Falk wouldn't look

at it. I do it for the sake of a lot of young white fellows here that

hadn't a place where they could get a decent meal and eat it decently in

good company. There's first-rate company always at my table."

The convinced way he surveyed the empty chairs made me feel as if I had

intruded upon a tiffin of ghostly Presences.

"A white man should eat like a white man, dash it all," he burst out

impetuously. "Ought to eat meat, must eat meat. I manage to get meat for

my patrons all the year round. Don't I? I am not catering for a dam' lot

of coolies: Have another chop captain. . . . No? You, boy--take away!"

He threw himself back and waited grimly for the curry. The half-closed

jalousies darkened the room pervaded by the smell of fresh whitewash:

a swarm of flies buzzed and settled in turns, and poor Mrs. Schomberg's

smile seemed to express the quintessence of all the imbecility that had

ever spoken, had ever breathed, had ever been fed on infamous buffalo

meat within these bare walls. Schomberg did not open his lips till he

was ready to thrust therein a spoonful of greasy rice. He rolled his

eyes ridiculously before he swallowed the hot stuff, and only then broke

out afresh.

"It is the most degrading thing. They take the dish up to the wheelhouse

for him with a cover on it, and he shuts both the doors before he begins

to eat. Fact! Must be ashamed of himself. Ask the engineer. He can't

do without an engineer--don't you see--and as no respectable man can be

expected to put up with such a table, he allows them fifteen dollars

a month extra mess money. I assure you it is so! You just ask Mr.

Ferdinand da Costa. That's the engineer he has now. You may have seen

him about my place, a delicate dark young man, with very fine eyes and a

little moustache. He arrived here a year ago from Calcutta. Between you

and me, I guess the money-lenders there must have been after him. He

rushes here for a meal every chance he can get, for just please tell me

what satisfaction is that for a well-educated young fellow to feed all

alone in his cabin--like a wild beast? That's what Falk expects his

engineers to put up with for fifteen dollars extra. And the rows on

board every time a little smell of cooking gets about the deck! You

wouldn't believe! The other day da Costa got the cook to fry a steak for

him--a turtle steak it was too, not beef at all--and the fat caught

or something. Young da Costa himself was telling me of it here in this

room. 'Mr. Schomberg'--says he-'if I had let a cylinder cover blow off

through the skylight by my negligence Captain Falk couldn't have been

more savage. He frightened the cook so that he won't put anything on the

fire for me now.' Poor da Costa had tears in his eyes. Only try to put

yourself in his place, captain: a sensitive, gentlemanly young fellow.

Is he expected to eat his food raw? But that's your Falk all over. Ask

any one you like. I suppose the fifteen dollars extra he has to give

keep on rankling--in there."

And Schomberg tapped his manly breast. I sat half stunned by his

irrelevant babble. Suddenly he gripped my forearm in an impressive and

cautious manner, as if to lead me into a very cavern of confidence.

"It's nothing but enviousness," he said in a lowered tone, which had a

stimulating effect upon my wearied hearing. "I don't suppose there

is one person in this town that he isn't envious of. I tell you he's

dangerous. Even I myself am not safe from him. I know for certain he

tried to poison . . . ."

"Oh, come now," I cried, revolted.

"But I know for certain. The people themselves came and told me of it.

He went about saying everywhere I was a worse pest to this town than the

cholera. He had been talking against me ever since I opened this hotel.

And he poisoned Captain Hermann's mind too. Last time the Diana was

loading here Captain Hermann used to come in every day for a drink or a

cigar. This time he hasn't been here twice in a week. How do you account

for that?"

He squeezed my arm till he extorted from me some sort of mumble.

"He makes ten times the money I do. I've another hotel to fight against,

and there is no other tug on the river. I am not in his way, am I? He

wouldn't be fit to run an hotel if he tried. But that's just his nature.

He can't bear to think I am making a living. I only hope it makes him

properly wretched. He's like that in everything. He would like to keep a

decent table well enough. But no--for the sake of a few cents. Can't do

it. It's too much for him. That's what I call being a slave to it. But

he's mean enough to kick up a row when his nose gets tickled a bit. See

that? That just paints him. Miserly and envious. You can't account for

it any other way. Can you? I have been studying him these three years."

He was anxious I should assent to his theory. And indeed on thinking it

over it would have been plausible enough if there hadn't been always the

essential falseness of irresponsibility in Schomberg's chatter. However,

I was not disposed to investigate the psychology of Falk. I was engaged

just then in eating despondently a piece of stale Dutch cheese, being

too much crushed to care what I swallowed myself, let along bothering my

head about Falk's ideas of gastronomy. I could expect from their study

no clue to his conduct in matters of business, which seemed to me

totally unrestrained by morality or even by the commonest sort of

decency. How insignificant and contemptible I must appear, for the

fellow to dare treat me like this--I reflected suddenly, writhing in

silent agony. And I consigned Falk and all his peculiarities to the

devil with so much mental fervour as to forget Schomberg's existence,

till he grabbed my arm urgently. "Well, you may think and think till

every hair of your head falls off, captain; but you can't explain it in

any other way."

For the sake of peace and quietness I admitted hurriedly that I

couldn't: persuaded that now he would leave off. But the only result was

to make his moist face shine with the pride of cunning. He removed his

hand for a moment to scare a black mass of flies off the sugar-basin and

caught hold of my arm again.

"To be sure. And in the same way everybody is aware he would like to get

married. Only he can't. Let me quote you an instance. Well, two years

ago a Miss Vanlo, a very ladylike girl, came from home to keep house for

her brother, Fred, who had an engineering shop for small repairs by

the water side. Suddenly Falk takes to going up to their bungalow after

dinner, and sitting for hours in the verandah saying nothing. The poor

girl couldn't tell for the life of her what to do with such a man, so

she would keep on playing the piano and singing to him evening after

evening till she was ready to drop. And it wasn't as if she had been

a strong young woman either. She was thirty, and the climate had been

playing the deuce with her. Then--don't you know--Fred had to sit up with

them for propriety, and during whole weeks on end never got a single

chance to get to bed before midnight. That was not pleasant for a tired

man--was it? And besides Fred had worries then because his shop didn't

pay and he was dropping money fast. He just longed to get away from here

and try his luck somewhere else, but for the sake of his sister he hung

on and on till he ran himself into debt over his ears--I can tell you.

I, myself, could show a handful of his chits for meals and drinks in

my drawer. I could never find out tho' where he found all the money at

last. Can't be but he must have got something out of that brother of

his, a coal merchant in Port Said. Anyhow he paid everybody before he

left, but the girl nearly broke her heart. Disappointment, of course,

and at her age, don't you know. . . . Mrs. Schomberg here was very

friendly with her, and she could tell you. Awful despair. Fainting

fits. It was a scandal. A notorious scandal. To that extent that old Mr.

Siegers--not your present charterer, but Mr. Siegers the father, the old

gentleman who retired from business on a fortune and got buried at sea

going home, _he_ had to interview Falk in his private office. He was a man

who could speak like a Dutch Uncle, and, besides, Messrs. Siegers had

been helping Falk with a good bit of money from the start. In fact you

may say they made him as far as that goes. It so happened that just at

the time he turned up here, their firm was chartering a lot of sailing

ships every year, and it suited their business that there should be good

towing facilities on the river. See? . . . Well--there's always an

ear at the keyhole--isn't there? In fact," he lowered his tone

confidentially, "in this case a good friend of mine; a man you can see

here any evening; only they conversed rather low. Anyhow my friend's

certain that Falk was trying to make all sorts of excuses, and old

Mr. Siegers was coughing a lot. And yet Falk wanted all the time to be

married too. Why! It's notorious the man has been longing for years to

make a home for himself. Only he can't face the expense. When it comes

to putting his hand in his pocket--it chokes him off. That's the truth

and no other. I've always said so, and everybody agrees with me by this

time. What do you think of that--eh?"

He appealed confidently to my indignation, but having a mind to annoy

him I remarked, "that it seemed to me very pitiful--if true."

He bounced in his chair as if I had run a pin into him. I don't know

what he might have said, only at that moment we heard through the half

open door of the billiard-room the footsteps of two men entering from

the verandah, a murmur of two voices; at the sharp tapping of a coin on

a table Mrs. Schomberg half rose irresolutely. "Sit still," he hissed at

her, and then, in an hospitable, jovial tone, contrasting amazingly with

the angry glance that had made his wife sink in her chair, he cried very

loud: "Tiffin still going on in here, gentlemen."

There was no answer, but the voices dropped suddenly. The head Chinaman

went out. We heard the clink of ice in the glasses, pouring sounds, the

shuffling of feet, the scraping of chairs. Schomberg, after wondering in

a low mutter who the devil could be there at this time of the day, got

up napkin in hand to peep through the doorway cautiously. He retreated

rapidly on tip-toe, and whispering behind his hand informed me that

it was Falk, Falk himself who was in there, and, what's more, he had

Captain Hermann with him.

The return of the tug from the outer Roads was unexpected but possible,

for Falk had taken away the Diana at half-past five, and it was now two

o'clock. Schomberg wished me to observe that neither of these men would

spend a dollar on a tiffin, which they must have wanted. But by the time

I was ready to leave the dining-room Falk had gone. I heard the last of

his big boots on the planks of the verandah. Hermann was sitting quite

alone in the large, wooden room with the two lifeless billiard tables

shrouded in striped covers, mopping his face diligently. He wore

his best go-ashore clothes, a stiff collar, black coat, large white

waistcoat, grey trousers. A white cotton sunshade with a cane handle

reposed between his legs, his side whiskers were neatly brushed, his

chin had been freshly shaved; and he only distantly resembled the

dishevelled and terrified man in a snuffy night shirt and ignoble old

trousers I had seen in the morning hanging on to the wheel of the Diana.

He gave a start at my entrance, and addressed me at once in some

confusion, but with genuine eagerness. He was anxious to make it clear

he had nothing to do with what he called the "tam pizness" of the

morning. It was most inconvenient. He had reckoned upon another day up

in town to settle his bills and sign certain papers. There were also

some few stores to come, and sundry pieces of "my ironwork," as he

called it quaintly, landed for repairs, had been left behind. Now he

would have to hire a native boat to take all this out to the ship. It

would cost five or six dollars perhaps. He had had no warning from

Falk. Nothing. . . . He hit the table with his dumpy fist. . . . Der

verfluchte Kerl came in the morning like a "tam' ropper," making a great

noise, and took him away. His mate was not prepared, his ship was moored

fast--he protested it was shameful to come upon a man in that way.

Shameful! Yet such was the power Falk had on the river that when I

suggested in a chilling tone that he might have simply refused to have

his ship moved, Hermann was quite startled at the idea. I never realised

so well before that this is an age of steam. The exclusive possession

of a marine boiler had given Falk the whip-hand of us all. Hermann,

recovering, put it to me appealingly that I knew very well how unsafe it

was to contradict that fellow. At this I only smiled distantly.

"Der Kerl!" he cried. He was sorry he had not refused. He was indeed.

The damage! The damage! What for all that damage! There was no occasion

for damage. Did I know how much damage he had done? It gave me a certain

satisfaction to tell him that I had heard his old waggon of a ship crack

fore and aft as she went by. "You passed close enough to me," I added

significantly.

He threw both his hands up to heaven at the recollection. One of them

grasped by the middle the white parasol, and he resembled curiously

a caricature of a shop-keeping citizen in one of his own German comic

papers. "Ach! That was dangerous," he cried. I was amused. But directly

he added with an appearance of simplicity, "The side of your iron ship

would have been crushed in like--like this matchbox."

"Would it?" I growled, much less amused now; but by the time I had

decided that this remark was not meant for a dig at me he had

worked himself into a high state of resentfulness against Falk. The

inconvenience, the damage, the expense! Gottferdam! Devil take the

fellow. Behind the bar Schomberg with a cigar in his teeth, pretended

to be writing with a pencil on a large sheet of paper; and as Hermann's

excitement increased it made me comfortingly aware of my own calmness

and superiority. But it occurred to me while I listened to his

revilings, that after all the good man had come up in the tug. There

perhaps--since he must come to town--he had no option. But evidently he

had had a drink with Falk, either accepted or offered. How was that? So

I checked him by saying loftily that I hoped he would make Falk pay for

every penny of the damage.

"That's it! That's it! Go for him," called out Schomberg from the bar,

flinging his pencil down and rubbing his hands.

We ignored his noise. But Hermann's excitement suddenly went off

the boil as when you remove a saucepan from the fire. I urged on his

consideration that he had done now with Falk and Falk's confounded tug.

He, Hermann, would not, perhaps, turn up again in this part of the world

for years to come, since he was going to sell the Diana at the end

of this very trip ("Go home passenger in a mail boat," he murmured

mechanically). He was therefore safe from Falk's malice. All he had to

do was to race off to his consignees and stop payment of the towage bill

before Falk had the time to get in and lift the money.

Nothing could have been less in the spirit of my advice than the

thoughtful way in which he set about to make his parasol stay propped

against the edge of the table.

While I watched his concentrated efforts with astonishment he threw at

me one or two perplexed, half-shy glances. Then he sat down. "That's all

very well," he said reflectively.

It cannot be doubted that the man had been thrown off his balance by

being hauled out of the harbour against his wish. His stolidity had been

profoundly stirred, else he would never have made up his mind to ask me

unexpectedly whether I had not remarked that Falk had been casting eyes

upon his niece. "No more than myself," I answered with literal truth.

The girl was of the sort one necessarily casts eyes at in a sense. She

made no noise, but she filled most satisfactorily a good bit of space.

"But you, captain, are not the same kind of man," observed Hermann.

I was not, I am happy to say, in a position to deny this. "What about

the lady?" I could not help asking. At this he gazed for a time into

my face, earnestly, and made as if to change the subject. I heard him

beginning to mutter something unexpected, about his children growing

old enough to require schooling. He would have to leave them ashore with

their grandmother when he took up that new command he expected to get in

Germany.

This constant harping on his domestic arrangements was funny. I suppose

it must have been like the prospect of a complete alteration in his

life. An epoch. He was going, too, to part with the Diana! He had served

in her for years. He had inherited her. From an uncle, if I remember

rightly. And the future loomed big before him, occupying his thought

exclusively with all its aspects as on the eve of a venturesome

enterprise. He sat there frowning and biting his lip, and suddenly he

began to fume and fret.

I discovered to my momentary amusement that he seemed to imagine I

could, should or ought, have caused Falk in some way to pronounce

himself. Such a hope was incomprehensible, but funny. Then the contact

with all this foolishness irritated me. I said crossly that I had seen

no symptoms, but if there were any--since he, Hermann, was so sure--then

it was still worse. What pleasure Falk found in humbugging people in

just that way I couldn't say. It was, however, my solemn duty to warn

him. It had lately, I said, come to my knowledge that there was a man

(not a very long time ago either) who had been taken in just like this.

All this passed in undertones, and at this point Schomberg, exasperated

at our secrecy, went out of the room slamming the door with a crash

that positively lifted us in our chairs. This, or else what I had said,

huffed my Hermann, He supposed, with a contemptuous toss of his head

towards the door which trembled yet, that I had got hold of some of

that man's silly tales. It looked, indeed, as though his mind had been

thoroughly poisoned against Schomberg. "His tales were--they were," he

repeated, seeking for the word--"trash." They were trash, he reiterated,

and moreover I was young yet . . .

This horrid aspersion (I regret I am no longer exposed to that sort of

insult) made me huffy too. I felt ready in my own mind to back up every

assertion of Schomberg's and on any subject. In a moment, devil only

knows why, Hermann and I were looking at each other most inimically.

He caught up his hat without more ado and I gave myself the pleasure of

calling after him:

"Take my advice and make Falk pay for breaking up your ship. You aren't

likely to get anything else out of him."

When I got on board my ship later on, the old mate, who was very full of

the events of the morning, remarked:

"I saw the tug coming back from the outer Roads just before two P.M."

(He never by any chance used the words morning or afternoon. Always P.M.

or A.M., log-book style.) "Smart work that. Man's always in a state of

hurry. He's a regular chucker-out, ain't he, sir? There's a few pubs I

know of in the East-end of London that would be all the better for

one of his sort around the bar." He chuckled at his joke. "A regular

chucker-out. Now he has fired out that Dutchman head over heels, I

suppose our turn's coming to-morrow morning."

We were all on deck at break of day (even the sick--poor devils--had

crawled out) ready to cast off in the twinkling of an eye. Nothing

came. Falk did not come. At last, when I began to think that probably

something had gone wrong in his engine-room, we perceived the tug going

by, full pelt, down the river, as if we hadn't existed. For a moment I

entertained the wild notion that he was going to turn round in the next

reach. Afterwards I watched his smoke appear above the plain, now here,

now there, according to the windings of the river. It disappeared. Then

without a word I went down to breakfast. I just simply went down to

breakfast.

Not one of us uttered a sound till the mate, after imbibing--by means

of suction out of a saucer--his second cup of tea, exclaimed: "Where the

devil is the man gone to?"

"Courting!" I shouted, with such a fiendish laugh that the old chap

didn't venture to open his lips any more.

I started to the office perfectly calm. Calm with excessive rage.

Evidently they knew all about it already, and they treated me to a

show of consternation. The manager, a soft-footed, immensely obese man,

breathing short, got up to meet me, while all round the room the young

clerks, bending over the papers on their desks, cast upward glances in

my direction. The fat man, without waiting for my complaint, wheezing

heavily and in a tone as if he himself were incredulous, conveyed to

me the news that Falk--Captain Falk--had declined--had absolutely

declined--to tow my ship--to have anything to do with my ship--this day

or any other day. Never!

I did my best to preserve a cool appearance, but, all the same, I must

have shown how much taken aback I was. We were talking in the middle

of the room. Suddenly behind my back some ass blew his nose with great

force, and at the same time another quill-driver jumped up and went out

on the landing hastily. It occurred to me I was cutting a foolish figure

there. I demanded angrily to see the principal in his private room.

The skin of Mr. Siegers' head showed dead white between the iron grey

streaks of hair lying plastered cross-wise from ear to ear over the top

of his skull in the manner of a bandage. His narrow sunken face was of

an uniform and permanent terra-cotta colour, like a piece of pottery.

He was sickly, thin, and short, with wrists like a boy of ten. But from

that debile body there issued a bullying voice, tremendously loud, harsh

and resonant, as if produced by some powerful mechanical contrivance

in the nature of a fog-horn. I do not know what he did with it in

the private life of his home, but in the larger sphere of business it

presented the advantage of overcoming arguments without the slightest

mental effort, by the mere volume of sound. We had had several

passages of arms. It took me all I knew to guard the interests of my

owners--whom, nota bene, I had never seen--while Siegers (who had

made their acquaintance some years before, during a business tour in

Australia) pretended to the knowledge of their innermost minds, and, in

the character of "our very good friends," threw them perpetually at my

head.

He looked at me with a jaundiced eye (there was no love lost between

us), and declared at once that it was strange, very strange. His

pronunciation of English was so extravagant that I can't even attempt to

reproduce it. For instance, he said "Fferie strantch." Combined with

the bellowing intonation it made the language of one's childhood sound

weirdly startling, and even if considered purely as a kind of unmeaning

noise it filled you with astonishment at first. "They had," he

continued, "been acquainted with Captain Falk for very many years, and

never had any reason. . . ."

"That's why I come to you, of course," I interrupted. "I've the right

to know the meaning of this infernal nonsense." In the half light of the

room, which was greenish, because of the tree-tops screening the

window, I saw him writhe his meagre shoulders. It came into my head, as

disconnected ideas will come at all sorts of times into one's head, that

this, most likely, was the very room where, if the tale were true, Falk

had been lectured by Mr. Siegers, the father. Mr. Siegers' (the son's)

overwhelming voice, in brassy blasts, as though he had been trying to

articulate his words through a trombone, was expressing his great regret

at a conduct characterised by a very marked want of discretion. . . As I

lived I was being lectured too! His deafening gibberish was difficult to

follow, but it was _my_ conduct--mine!--that . . . Damn! I wasn't going to

stand this.

"What on earth are you driving at?" I asked in a passion. I put my hat

on my head (he never offered a seat to anybody), and as he seemed for

the moment struck dumb by my irreverence, I turned my back on him and

marched out. His vocal arrangements blared after me a few threats of

coming down on the ship for the demurrage of the lighters, and all the

other expenses consequent upon the delays arising from my frivolity.

Once outside in the sunshine my head swam. It was no longer a question

of mere delay. I perceived myself involved in hopeless and humiliating

absurdities that were leading me to something very like a disaster. "Let

us be calm," I muttered to myself, and ran into the shade of a

leprous wall. From that short side-street I could see the broad main

thoroughfare ruinous and gay, running away, away between stretches of

decaying masonry, bamboo fences, ranges of arcades of brick and plaster,

hovels of lath and mud, lofty temple gates of carved timber, huts of

rotten mats--an immensely wide thoroughfare, loosely packed as far as

the eye could reach with a barefooted and brown multitude paddling ankle

deep in the dust. For a moment I felt myself about to go out of my mind

with worry and desperation.

Some allowance must be made for the feelings of a young man new to

responsibility. I thought of my crew. Half of them were ill, and I

really began to think that some of them would end by dying on board if

I couldn't get them out to sea soon. Obviously I should have to take my

ship down the river, either working under canvas or dredging with the

anchor down; operations which, in common with many modern sailors,

I only knew theoretically. And I almost shrank from undertaking them

shorthanded and without local knowledge of the river bed, which is so

necessary for the confident handling of the ship. There were no pilots,

no beacons, no buoys of any sort; but there was a very devil of a

current for anybody to see, no end of shoal places, and at least two

obviously awkward turns of the channel between me and the sea. But how

dangerous these turns were I would not tell. I didn't even know what

my ship was capable of! I had never handled her in my life. A

misunderstanding between a man and his ship in a difficult river with no

room to make it up, is bound to end in trouble for the man. On the other

hand, it must be owned I had not much reason to count upon a general run

of good luck. And suppose I had the misfortune to pile her up high and

dry on some beastly shoal? That would have been the final undoing of

that voyage. It was plain that if Falk refused to tow me out he would

also refuse to pull me off. This meant--what? A day lost at the

very best; but more likely a whole fortnight of frizzling on some

pestilential mud-flat, of desperate work, of discharging cargo; more than

likely it meant borrowing money at an exorbitant rate of interest--from

the Siegers' gang too at that. They were a power in the port. And that

elderly seaman of mine, Gambril, had looked pretty ghastly when I

went forward to dose him with quinine that morning. _He_ would certainly

die--not to speak of two or three others that seemed nearly as bad,

and of the rest of them just ready to catch any tropical disease going.

Horror, ruin and everlasting remorse. And no help. None. I had fallen

amongst a lot of unfriendly lunatics!

At any rate, if I must take my ship down myself it was my duty to

procure if possible some local knowledge. But that was not easy. The

only person I could think of for that service was a certain Johnson,

formerly captain of a country ship, but now spliced to a country wife

and gone utterly to the bad. I had only heard of him in the vaguest way,

as living concealed in the thick of two hundred thousand natives, and

only emerging into the light of day for the purpose of hunting up some

brandy. I had a notion that if I could lay my hands on him I would sober

him on board my ship and use him for a pilot. Better than nothing. Once

a sailor always a sailor--and he had known the river for years. But in

our Consulate (where I arrived dripping after a sharp walk) they could

tell me nothing. The excellent young men on the staff, though willing to

help me, belonged to a sphere of the white colony for which that sort of

Johnson does not exist. Their suggestion was that I should hunt the

man up myself with the help of the Consulate's constable--an

ex-sergeant-major of a regiment of Hussars.

This man, whose usual duty apparently consisted in sitting behind a

little table in an outer room of Consular offices, when ordered to

assist me in my search for Johnson displayed lots of energy and a

marvellous amount of local knowledge of a sort. But he did not conceal

an immense and sceptical contempt for the whole business. We explored

together on that afternoon an infinity of infamous grog shops, gambling

dens, opium dens. We walked up narrow lanes where our gharry--a tiny

box of a thing on wheels, attached to a jibbing Burmah pony--could by

no means have passed. The constable seemed to be on terms of scornful

intimacy with Maltese, with Eurasians, with Chinamen, with Klings, and

with the sweepers attached to a temple, with whom he talked at the gate.

We interviewed also through a grating in a mud wall closing a blind

alley an immensely corpulent Italian, who, the ex-sergeant-major

remarked to me perfunctorily, had "killed another man last year."

Thereupon he addressed him as "Antonio" and "Old Buck," though that

bloated carcase, apparently more than half filling the sort of cell

wherein it sat, recalled rather a fat pig in a stye. Familiar and never

unbending, the sergeant chucked--absolutely chucked--under the chin

a horribly wrinkled and shrivelled old hag propped on a stick, who had

volunteered some sort of information: and with the same stolid face he

kept up an animated conversation with the groups of swathed brown women,

who sat smoking cheroots on the door-steps of a long range of clay

hovels. We got out of the gharry and clambered into dwellings airy like

packing crates, or descended into places sinister like cellars. We got

in, we drove on, we got out again for the sole purpose, as it seemed, of

looking behind a heap of rubble. The sun declined; my companion was curt

and sardonic in his answers, but it appears we were just missing Johnson

all along. At last our conveyance stopped once more with a jerk, and the

driver jumping down opened the door.

A black mudhole blocked the lane. A mound of garbage crowned with the

dead body of a dog arrested us not. An empty Australian beef tin bounded

cheerily before the toe of my boot. Suddenly we clambered through a gap

in a prickly fence. . . .

It was a very clean native compound: and the big native woman, with bare

brown legs as thick as bedposts, pursuing on all fours a silver dollar

that came rolling out from somewhere, was Mrs. Johnson herself. "Your

man's at home," said the ex-sergeant, and stepped aside in complete

and marked indifference to anything that might follow. Johnson--at

home--stood with his back to a native house built on posts and with its

walls made of mats. In his left hand he held a banana. Out of the right

he dealt another dollar into space. The woman captured this one on the

wing, and there and then plumped down on the ground to look at us with

greater comfort.

My man was sallow of face, grizzled, unshaven, muddy on elbows and

back; where the seams of his serge coat yawned you could see his white

nakedness. The vestiges of a paper collar encircled his neck. He looked

at us with a grave, swaying surprise. "Where do you come from?" he

asked. My heart sank. How could I have been stupid enough to waste

energy and time for this?

But having already gone so far I approached a little nearer and declared

the purpose of my visit. He would have to come at once with me, sleep on

board my ship, and to-morrow, with the first of the ebb, he would give

me his assistance in getting my ship down to the sea, without steam. A

six-hundred-ton barque, drawing nine feet aft. I proposed to give

him eighteen dollars for his local knowledge; and all the time I was

speaking he kept on considering attentively the various aspects of the

banana, holding first one side up to his eye, then the other.

"You've forgotten to apologise," he said at last with extreme precision.

"Not being a gentleman yourself, you don't know apparently when you

intrude upon a gentleman. I am one. I wish you to understand that when I

am in funds I don't work, and now . . ."

I would have pronounced him perfectly sober hadn't he paused in great

concern to try and brush a hole off the knee of his trousers.

"I have money--and friends. Every gentleman has. Perhaps you would like

to know my friend? His name is Falk. You could borrow some money. Try to

remember. F-A-L-K, Falk." Abruptly his tone changed. "A noble heart," he

said muzzily.

"Has Falk been giving you some money?" I asked, appalled by the detailed

finish of the dark plot.

"Lent me, my good man, not given me. Lent," he corrected suavely.

"Met me taking the air last evening, and being as usual anxious to

oblige--Hadn't you better go to the devil out of my compound?"

And upon this, without other warning, he let fly with the banana which

missed my head, and took the constable just under the left eye. He

rushed at the miserable Johnson, stammering with fury. They fell. . . .

But why dwell on the wretchedness, the breathlessness, the degradation,

the senselessness, the weariness, the ridicule and humiliation

and--and--the perspiration, of these moments? I dragged the ex-hussar

off. He was like a wild beast. It seems he had been greatly annoyed

at losing his free afternoon on my account. The garden of his bungalow

required his personal attention, and at the slight blow of the banana

the brute in him had broken loose. We left Johnson on his back, still

black in the face, but beginning to kick feebly. Meantime, the big woman

had remained sitting on the ground, apparently paralysed with extreme

terror.

For half an hour we jolted inside our rolling box, side by side, in

profound silence. The ex-sergeant was busy staunching the blood of a

long scratch on his cheek. "I hope you're satisfied," he said suddenly.

"That's what comes of all that tomfool business. If you hadn't

quarrelled with that tugboat skipper over some girl or other, all this

wouldn't have happened."

"You heard _that_ story?" I said.

"Of course I heard. And I shouldn't wonder if the Consul-General himself

doesn't come to hear of it. How am I to go before him to-morrow with

that thing on my cheek--I want to know. Its _you_ who ought to have got

this!"

After that, till the gharry stopped and he jumped out without

leave-taking, he swore to himself steadily, horribly; muttering great,

purposeful, trooper oaths, to which the worst a sailor can do is like

the prattle of a child. For my part I had just the strength to crawl

into Schomberg's coffee-room, where I wrote at a little table a note to

the mate instructing him to get everything ready for dropping down the

river next day. I couldn't face my ship. Well! she had a clever sort of

skipper and no mistake--poor thing! What a horrid mess! I took my head

between my hands. At times the obviousness of my innocence would reduce

me to despair. What had I done? If I had done something to bring about

the situation I should at least have learned not to do it again. But I

felt guiltless to the point of imbecility. The room was empty yet;

only Schomberg prowled round me goggle-eyed and with a sort of awed

respectful curiosity. No doubt he had set the story going himself; but

he was a good-hearted chap, and I am really persuaded he participated in

all my troubles. He did what he could for me. He ranged aside the heavy

match-stand, set a chair straight, pushed a spittoon slightly with

his foot--as you show small attentions to a friend under a great

sorrow--sighed, and at last, unable to hold his tongue:

"Well! I warned you, captain. That's what comes of running your head

against Mr. Falk. Man'll stick at nothing."

I sat without stirring, and after surveying me with a sort of

commiseration in his eyes he burst out in a hoarse whisper: "But for

a fine lump of a girl, she's a fine lump of a girl." He made a loud

smacking noise with his thick lips. "The finest lump of a girl that I

ever . . ." he was going on with great unction, but for some reason or

other broke off. I fancied myself throwing something at his head. "I

don't blame you, captain. Hang me if I do," he said with a patronising

air.

"Thank you," I said resignedly. It was no use fighting against this

false fate. I don't know even if I was sure myself where the truth of

the matter began. The conviction that it would end disastrously had been

driven into me by all the successive shocks my sense of security had

received. I began to ascribe an extraordinary potency to agents in

themselves powerless. It was as if Schomberg's baseless gossip had the

power to bring about the thing itself or the abstract enmity of Falk

could put my ship ashore.

I have already explained how fatal this last would have been. For my

further action, my youth, my inexperience, my very real concern for the

health of my crew must be my excuse. The action itself, when it came,

was purely impulsive. It was set in movement quite undiplomatically and

simply by Falk's appearance in the doorway.

The room was full by then and buzzing with voices. I had been looked

at with curiosity by every one, but how am I to describe the sensation

produced by the appearance of Falk himself blocking the doorway? The

tension of expectation could be measured by the profundity of the

silence that fell upon the very click of the billiard balls. As to

Schomberg, he looked extremely frightened; he hated mortally any sort

of row (fracas he called it) in his establishment. Fracas was bad

for business, he affirmed; but, in truth, this specimen of portly,

middle-aged manhood was of a timid disposition. I don't know what,

considering my presence in the place, they all hoped would come of it. A

sort of stag fight, perhaps. Or they may have supposed Falk had come in

only to annihilate me completely. As a matter of fact, Falk had come in

because Hermann had asked him to inquire after the precious white cotton

parasol which, in the worry and excitement of the previous day, he had

forgotten at the table where we had held our little discussion.

It was this that gave me my opportunity. I don't think I would have gone

to seek Falk out. No. I don't think so. There are limits. But there was

an opportunity and I seized it--I have already tried to explain why. Now

I will merely state that, in my opinion, to get his sickly crew into

the sea air and secure a quick despatch for his ship a skipper would be

justified in going to any length, short of absolute crime. He should

put his pride in his pocket; he may accept confidences; explain his

innocence as if it were a sin; he may take advantage of misconceptions,

of desires and of weaknesses; he ought to conceal his horror and other

emotions, and, if the fate of a human being, and that human being

a magnificent young girl, is strangely involved--why, he should

contemplate that fate (whatever it might seem to be) without turning a

hair. And all these things I have done; the explaining, the listening,

the pretending--even to the discretion--and nobody, not even Hermann's

niece, I believe, need throw stones at me now. Schomberg at all events

needn't, since from first to last, I am happy to say, there was not the

slightest "fracas."

Overcoming a nervous contraction of the windpipe, I had managed to

exclaim "Captain Falk!" His start of surprise was perfectly genuine, but

afterwards he neither smiled nor scowled. He simply waited. Then, when

I had said, "I must have a talk with you," and had pointed to a chair

at my table, he moved up to me, though he didn't sit down. Schomberg,

however, with a long tumbler in his hand, was making towards us

prudently, and I discovered then the only sign of weakness in Falk. He

had for Schomberg a repulsion resembling that sort of physical fear

some people experience at the sight of a toad. Perhaps to a man so

essentially and silently concentrated upon himself (though he could talk

well enough, as I was to find out presently) the other's irrepressible

loquacity, embracing every human being within range of the tongue, might

have appeared unnatural, disgusting, and monstrous. He suddenly gave

signs of restiveness--positively like a horse about to rear, and,

muttering hurriedly as if in great pain, "No. I can't stand that

fellow," seemed ready to bolt. This weakness of his gave me the

advantage at the very start. "Verandah," I suggested, as if rendering

him a service, and walked him out by the arm. We stumbled over a few

chairs; we had the feeling of open space before us, and felt the fresh

breath of the river--fresh, but tainted. The Chinese theatres across the

water made, in the sparsely twinkling masses of gloom an Eastern town

presents at night, blazing centres of light, and of a distant and

howling uproar. I felt him become suddenly tractable again like an

animal, like a good-tempered horse when the object that scares him is

removed. Yes. I felt in the darkness there how tractable he was, without

my conviction of his inflexibility--tenacity, rather, perhaps--being in

the least weakened. His very arm abandoning itself to my grasp was as

hard as marble--like a limb of iron. But I heard a tumultuous scuffling

of boot-soles within. The unspeakable idiots inside were crowding to the

windows, climbing over each other's backs behind the blinds, billiard

cues and all. Somebody broke a window pane, and with the sound of

falling glass, so suggestive of riot and devastation, Schomberg reeled

out after us in a state of funk which had prevented his parting with his

brandy and soda. He must have trembled like an aspen leaf. The piece of

ice in the long tumbler he held in his hand tinkled with an effect

of chattering teeth. "I beg you, gentlemen," he expostulated thickly.

"Come! Really, now, I must insist . . ."

How proud I am of my presence of mind! "Hallo," I said instantly in a

loud and naive tone, "somebody's breaking your windows, Schomberg. Would

you please tell one of your boys to bring out here a pack of cards and a

couple of lights? And two long drinks. Will you?"

To receive an order soothed him at once. It was business. "Certainly,"

he said in an immensely relieved tone. The night was rainy, with

wandering gusts of wind, and while we waited for the candles Falk said,

as if to justify his panic, "I don't interfere in anybody's business.

I don't give any occasion for talk. I am a respectable man. But this

fellow is always making out something wrong, and can never rest till he

gets somebody to believe him."

This was the first of my knowledge of Falk. This desire of

respectability, of being like everybody else, was the only recognition

he vouchsafed to the organisation of mankind. For the rest he might have

been the member of a herd, not of a society. Self-preservation was his

only concern. Not selfishness, but mere self-preservation. Selfishness

presupposes consciousness, choice, the presence of other men; but his

instinct acted as though he were the last of mankind nursing that law

like the only spark of a sacred fire. I don't mean to say that living

naked in a cavern would have satisfied him. Obviously he was

the creature of the conditions to which he was born. No doubt

self-preservation meant also the preservation of these conditions. But

essentially it meant something much more simple, natural, and powerful.

How shall I express it? It meant the preservation of the five senses

of his body--let us say--taking it in its narrowest as well as in its

widest meaning. I think you will admit before long the justice of this

judgment. However, as we stood there together in the dark verandah I had

judged nothing as yet--and I had no desire to judge--which is an idle

practice anyhow. The light was long in coming.

"Of course," I said in a tone of mutual understanding, "it isn't exactly

a game of cards I want with you."

I saw him draw his hands down his face--the vague stir of the passionate

and meaningless gesture; but he waited in silent patience. It was

only when the lights had been brought out that he opened his lips. I

understood his mumble to mean that "he didn't know any game."

"Like this Schomberg and all the other fools will have to keep off,"

I said tearing open the pack. "Have you heard that we are universally

supposed to be quarrelling about a girl? You know who--of course. I am

really ashamed to ask, but is it possible that you do me the honour to

think me dangerous?"

As I said these words I felt how absurd it was and also I felt

flattered--for, really, what else could it be? His answer, spoken in

his usual dispassionate undertone, made it clear that it was so, but

not precisely as flattering as I supposed. He thought me dangerous with

Hermann, more than with the girl herself; but, as to quarrelling, I

saw at once how inappropriate the word was. We had no quarrel. Natural

forces are not quarrelsome. You can't quarrel with the wind that

inconveniences and humiliates you by blowing off your hat in a street

full of people. He had no quarrel with me. Neither would a boulder,

falling on my head, have had. He fell upon me in accordance with the law

by which he was moved--not of gravitation, like a detached stone, but

of self-preservation. Of course this is giving it a rather wide

interpretation. Strictly speaking, he had existed and could have existed

without being married. Yet he told me that he had found it more and

more difficult to live alone. Yes. He told me this in his low, careless

voice, to such a pitch of confidence had we arrived at the end of half

an hour.

It took me just about that time to convince him that I had never

dreamed of marrying Hermann's niece. Could any necessity have been more

extravagant? And the difficulty was the greater because he was so hard

hit that he couldn't imagine anybody being able to remain in a state of

indifference. Any man with eyes in his head, he seemed to think, could

not help coveting so much bodily magnificence. This profound belief was

conveyed by the manner he listened sitting sideways to the table and

playing absently with a few cards I had dealt to him at random. And the

more I saw into him the more I saw of him. The wind swayed the lights

so that his sunburnt face, whiskered to the eyes, seemed to successively

flicker crimson at me and to go out. I saw the extraordinary breadth

of the high cheek-bones, the perpendicular style of the features,

the massive forehead, steep like a cliff, denuded at the top, largely

uncovered at the temples. The fact is I had never before seen him

without his hat; but now, as if my fervour had made him hot, he had

taken it off and laid it gently on the floor. Something peculiar in

the shape and setting of his yellow eyes gave them the provoking

silent intensity which characterised his glance. But the face was thin,

furrowed, worn; I discovered that through the bush of his hair, as

you may detect the gnarled shape of a tree trunk lost in a dense

undergrowth. These overgrown cheeks were sunken. It was an anchorite's

bony head fitted with a Capuchin's beard and adjusted to a herculean

body. I don't mean athletic. Hercules, I take it, was not an athlete. He

was a strong man, susceptible to female charms, and not afraid of dirt.

And thus with Falk, who was a strong man. He was extremely strong, just

as the girl (since I must think of them together) was magnificently

attractive by the masterful power of flesh and blood, expressed in

shape, in size, in attitude--that is by a straight appeal to the senses.

His mind meantime, preoccupied with respectability, quailed before

Schomberg's tongue and seemed absolutely impervious to my protestations;

and I went so far as to protest that I would just as soon think of

marrying my mother's (dear old lady!) faithful female cook as Hermann's

niece. Sooner, I protested, in my desperation, much sooner; but it did

not appear that he saw anything outrageous in the proposition, and in

his sceptical immobility he seemed to nurse the argument that at all

events the cook was very, very far away. It must be said that, just

before, I had gone wrong by appealing to the evidence of my manner

whenever I called on board the Diana. I had never attempted to approach

the girl, or to speak to her, or even to look at her in any marked way.

Nothing could be clearer. But, as his own idea of--let us say--courting,

seemed to consist precisely in sitting silently for hours in the

vicinity of the beloved object, that line of argument inspired him with

distrust. Staring down his extended legs he let out a grunt--as much as

to say, "That's all very fine, but you can't throw dust in _my_ eyes."

At last I was exasperated into saying, "Why don't you put the matter at

rest by talking to Hermann?" and I added sneeringly: "You don't expect

me perhaps to speak for you?"

To this he said, very loud for him, "Would you?"

And for the first time he lifted his head to look at me with wonder

and incredulity. He lifted his head so sharply that there could be

no mistake. I had touched a spring. I saw the whole extent of my

opportunity, and could hardly believe in it.

"Why. Speak to . . . Well, of course," I proceeded very slowly, watching

him with great attention, for, on my word, I feared a joke. "Not,

perhaps, to the young lady herself. I can't speak German, you know. But

. . ."

He interrupted me with the earnest assurance that Hermann had the

highest opinion of me; and at once I felt the need for the greatest

possible diplomacy at this juncture. So I demurred just enough to draw

him on. Falk sat up, but except for a very noticeable enlargement of the

pupils, till the irises of his eyes were reduced to two narrow yellow

rings, his face, I should judge, was incapable of expressing excitement.

"Oh, yes! Hermann did have the greatest . . ."

"Take up your cards. Here's Schomberg peeping at us through the blind!"

I said.

We went through the motions of what might have been a game of e'carte'.

Presently the intolerable scandalmonger withdrew, probably to inform the

people in the billiard-room that we two were gambling on the verandah

like mad.

We were not gambling, but it was a game; a game in which I felt I held

the winning cards. The stake, roughly speaking, was the success of the

voyage--for me; and he, I apprehended, had nothing to lose. Our intimacy

matured rapidly, and before many words had been exchanged I perceived

that the excellent Hermann had been making use of me. That simple and

astute Teuton had been, it seems, holding me up to Falk in the light of

a rival. I was young enough to be shocked at so much duplicity. "Did he

tell you that in so many words?" I asked with indignation.

Hermann had not. He had given hints only; and of course it had not taken

very much to alarm Falk; but, instead of declaring himself, he had taken

steps to remove the family from under my influence. He was perfectly

straightforward about it--as straightforward as a tile falling on your

head. There was no duplicity in that man; and when I congratulated

him on the perfection of his arrangements--even to the bribing of the

wretched Johnson against me--he had a genuine movement of protest. Never

bribed. He knew the man wouldn't work as long as he had a few cents in

his pocket to get drunk on, and, naturally (he said-"_naturally_") he

let him have a dollar or two. He was himself a sailor, he said, and

anticipated the view another sailor, like myself, was bound to take.

On the other hand, he was sure that I should have to come to grief. He

hadn't been knocking about for the last seven years up and down that

river for nothing. It would have been no disgrace to me--but he asserted

confidently I would have had my ship very awkwardly ashore at a spot two

miles below the Great Pagoda. . . .

And with all that he had no ill-will. That was evident. This was a

crisis in which his only object had been to gain time--I fancy. And

presently he mentioned that he had written for some jewellery, real good

jewellery--had written to Hong-Kong for it. It would arrive in a day or

two.

"Well, then," I said cheerily, "everything is all right. All you've got

to do is to present it to the lady together with your heart, and live

happy ever after."

Upon the whole he seemed to accept that view as far as the girl was

concerned, but his eyelids drooped. There was still something in the

way. For one thing Hermann disliked him so much. As to me, on the

contrary, it seemed as though he could not praise me enough. Mrs.

Hermann too. He didn't know why they disliked him so. It made everything

most difficult.

I listened impassive, feeling more and more diplomatic. His speech was

not transparently clear. He was one of those men who seem to live, feel,

suffer in a sort of mental twilight. But as to being fascinated by the

girl and possessed by the desire of home life with her--it was as clear

as daylight. So much being at stake, he was afraid of putting it to

the hazard of declaration. Besides, there was something else. And with

Hermann being so set against him . . .

"I see," I said thoughtfully, while my heart beat fast with the

excitement of my diplomacy. "I don't mind sounding Hermann. In fact, to

show you how mistaken you were, I am ready to do all I can for you in

that way."

A light sigh escaped him. He drew his hands down his face, and it

emerged, bony, unchanged of expression, as if all the tissues had

been ossified. All the passion was in those big brown hands. He was

satisfied. Then there was that other matter. If there were anybody on

earth it was I who could persuade Hermann to take a reasonable view! I

had a knowledge of the world and lots of experience. Hermann admitted

this himself. And then I was a sailor too. Falk thought that a sailor

would be able to understand certain things best. . . .

He talked as if the Hermanns had been living all their life in a rural

hamlet, and I alone had been capable, with my practice in life, of

a large and indulgent view of certain occurrences. That was what my

diplomacy was leading me to. I began suddenly to dislike it.

"I say, Falk," I asked quite brusquely, "you haven't already a wife put

away somewhere?"

The pain and disgust of his denial were very striking. Couldn't I

understand that he was as respectable as any white man hereabouts;

earning his living honestly. He was suffering from my suspicion, and the

low undertone of his voice made his protestations sound very pathetic.

For a moment he shamed me, but, my diplomacy notwithstanding, I seemed

to develop a conscience, as if in very truth it were in my power to

decide the success of this matrimonial enterprise. By pretending hard

enough we come to believe anything--anything to our advantage. And I had

been pretending very hard, because I meant yet to be towed safely down

the river. But through conscience or stupidity, I couldn't help alluding

to the Vanlo affair. "You acted rather badly there. Didn't you?" was

what I ventured actually to say--for the logic of our conduct is always

at the mercy of obscure and unforeseen impulses.

His dilated pupils swerved from my face, glancing at the window with

a sort of scared fury. We heard behind the blinds the continuous

and sudden clicking of ivory, a jovial murmur of many voices, and

Schomberg's deep manly laugh.

"That confounded old woman of a hotel-keeper then would never, never let

it rest!" Falk exclaimed. "Well, yes! It had happened two years ago."

When it came to the point he owned he couldn't make up his mind to trust

Fred Vanlo--no sailor, a bit of a fool too. He could not trust him,

but, to stop his row, he had lent him enough money to pay all his debts

before he left. I was greatly surprised to hear this. Then Falk could

not be such a miser after all. So much the better for the girl. For a

time he sat silent; then he picked up a card, and while looking at it he

said:

"You need not think of anything bad. It was an accident. I've been

unfortunate once."

"Then in heaven's name say nothing about it."

As soon as these words were out of my mouth I fancied I had said

something immoral. He shook his head negatively. It had to be told.

He considered it proper that the relations of the lady should know. No

doubt--I thought to myself--had Miss Vanlo not been thirty and damaged by

the climate he would have found it possible to entrust Fred Vanlo with

this confidence. And then the figure of Hermann's niece appeared before

my mind's eye, with the wealth of her opulent form, her rich youth, her

lavish strength. With that powerful and immaculate vitality, her girlish

form must have shouted aloud of life to that man, whereas poor Miss

Vanlo could only sing sentimental songs to the strumming of a piano.

"And that Hermann hates me, I know it!" he cried in his undertone, with

a sudden recrudescence of anxiety. "I must tell them. It is proper that

they should know. You would say so yourself."

He then murmured an utterly mysterious allusion to the necessity for

peculiar domestic arrangements. Though my curiosity was excited I did

not want to hear any of his confidences. I feared he might give me a

piece of information that would make my assumed role of match-maker

odious--however unreal it was. I was aware that he could have the girl

for the asking; and keeping down a desire to laugh in his face, I

expressed a confident belief in my ability to argue away Hermann's

dislike for him. "I am sure I can make it all right," I said. He looked

very pleased.

And when we rose not a word had been said about towage! Not a word! The

game was won and the honour was safe. Oh! blessed white cotton umbrella!

We shook hands, and I was holding myself with difficulty from breaking

into a step dance of joy when he came back, striding all the length of

the verandah, and said doubtfully:

"I say, captain, I have your word? You--you--won't turn round?"

Heavens! The fright he gave me. Behind his tone of doubt there was

something desperate and menacing. The infatuated ass. But I was equal to

the situation.

"My dear Falk," I said, beginning to lie with a glibness and effrontery

that amazed me even at the time--"confidence for confidence." (He had

made no confidences.) "I will tell you that I am already engaged to an

extremely charming girl at home, and so you understand. . . ."

He caught my hand and wrung it in a crushing grip.

"Pardon me. I feel it every day more difficult to live alone . . ."

"On rice and fish," I interrupted smartly, giggling with the sheer

nervousness of a danger escaped.

He dropped my hand as if it had become suddenly red hot. A moment of

profound silence ensued, as though something extraordinary had happened.

"I promise you to obtain Hermann's consent," I faltered out at last, and

it seemed to me that he could not help seeing through that humbugging

promise. "If there's anything else to get over I shall endeavour

to stand by you," I conceded further, feeling somehow defeated and

over-borne; "but you must do your best yourself."

"I have been unfortunate once," he muttered unemotionally, and turning

his back on me he went away, thumping slowly the plank floor as if his

feet had been shod with iron.

Next morning, however, he was lively enough as man-boat, a combination

of splashing and shouting; of the insolent commotion below with the

steady overbearing glare of the silent head-piece above. He turned us

out most unnecessarily at an ungodly hour, but it was nearly eleven

in the morning before he brought me up a cable's length from Hermann's

ship. And he did it very badly too, in a hurry, and nearly contriving to

miss altogether the patch of good holding ground, because, forsooth,

he had caught sight of Hermann's niece on the poop. And so did I; and

probably as soon as he had seen her himself. I saw the modest, sleek

glory of the tawny head, and the full, grey shape of the girlish print

frock she filled so perfectly, so satisfactorily, with the seduction of

unfaltering curves--a very nymph of Diana the Huntress. And Diana the

ship sat, high-walled and as solid as an institution, on the smooth

level of the water, the most uninspiring and respectable craft upon the

seas, useful and ugly, devoted to the support of domestic virtues like

any grocer's shop on shore. At once Falk steamed away; for there was

some work for him to do. He would return in the evening.

He ranged close by us, passing out dead slow, without a hail. The beat

of the paddle-wheels reverberating amongst the stony islets, as if from

the ruined walls of a vast arena, filled the anchorage confusedly with

the clapping sounds of a mighty and leisurely applause. Abreast of

Hermann's ship he stopped the engines; and a profound silence reigned

over the rocks, the shore and the sea, for the time it took him to raise

his hat aloft before the nymph of the grey print frock. I had snatched

up my binoculars, and I can answer for it she didn't stir a limb,

standing by the rail shapely and erect, with one of her hands grasping a

rope at the height of her head, while the way of the tug carried slowly

past her the lingering and profound homage of the man. There was for me

an enormous significance in the scene, the sense of having witnessed

a solemn declaration. The die was cast. After such a manifestation he

couldn't back out. And I reflected that it was nothing whatever to me

now. With a rush of black smoke belching suddenly out of the funnel, and

a mad swirl of paddle-wheels provoking a burst of weird and precipitated

clapping, the tug shot out of the desolate arena. The rocky islets lay

on the sea like the heaps of a cyclopean ruin on a plain; the centipedes

and scorpions lurked under the stones; there was not a single blade

of grass in sight anywhere, not a single lizard sunning himself on a

boulder by the shore. When I looked again at Hermann's ship the girl

had disappeared. I could not detect the smallest dot of a bird on the

immense sky, and the flatness of the land continued the flatness of the

sea to the naked line of the horizon.

This is the setting now inseparably connected with my knowledge of

Falk's misfortune. My diplomacy had brought me there, and now I had only

to wait the time for taking up the role of an ambassador. My diplomacy

was a success; my ship was safe; old Gambril would probably live; a

feeble sound of a tapping hammer came intermittently from the Diana.

During the afternoon I looked at times at the old homely ship, the

faithful nurse of Hermann's progeny, or yawned towards the distant

temple of Buddha, like a lonely hillock on the plain, where shaven

priests cherish the thoughts of that Annihilation which is the worthy

reward of us all. Unfortunate! He had been unfortunate once. Well, that

was not so bad as life goes. And what the devil could be the nature

of that misfortune? I remembered that I had known a man before who had

declared himself to have fallen, years ago, a victim to misfortune; but

this misfortune, whose effects appeared permanent (he looked desperately

hard up) when considered dispassionately, seemed indistinguishable from

a breach of trust. Could it be something of that nature? Apart, however,

from the utter improbability that he would offer to talk of it even to

his future uncle-in-law, I had a strange feeling that Falk's physique

unfitted him for that sort of delinquency. As the person of Hermann's

niece exhaled the profound physical charm of feminine form, so her

adorer's big frame embodied to my senses the hard, straight masculinity

that would conceivably kill but would not condescend to cheat. The thing

was obvious. I might just as well have suspected the girl of a curvature

of the spine. And I perceived that the sun was about to set.

The smoke of Falk's tug hove in sight, far away at the mouth of the

river. It was time for me to assume the character of an ambassador, and

the negotiation would not be difficult except in the matter of keeping

my countenance. It was all too extravagantly nonsensical, and I

conceived that it would be best to compose for myself a grave demeanour.

I practised this in my boat as I went along, but the bashfulness that

came secretly upon me the moment I stepped on the deck of the Diana is

inexplicable. As soon as we had exchanged greetings Hermann asked me

eagerly if I knew whether Falk had found his white parasol.

"He's going to bring it to you himself directly," I said with great

solemnity. "Meantime I am charged with an important message for which he

begs your favourable consideration. He is in love with your niece. . . ."

"Ach So!" he hissed with an animosity that made my assumed gravity

change into the most genuine concern. What meant this tone? And I

hurried on.

"He wishes, with your consent of course, to ask her to marry him at

once--before you leave here, that is. He would speak to the Consul."

Hermann sat down and smoked violently. Five minutes passed in that

furious meditation, and then, taking the long pipe out of his mouth,

he burst into a hot diatribe against Falk--against his cupidity, his

stupidity (a fellow that can hardly be got to say "yes" or "no" to the

simplest question)--against his outrageous treatment of the shipping in

port (because he saw they were at his mercy)--and against his manner

of walking, which to his (Hermann's) mind showed a conceit positively

unbearable. The damage to the old Diana was not forgotten, of course,

and there was nothing of any nature said or done by Falk (even to the

last offer of refreshment in the hotel) that did not seem to have been

a cause of offence. "Had the cheek" to drag him (Hermann) into that

coffee-room; as though a drink from him could make up for forty-seven

dollars and fifty cents of damage in the cost of wood alone--not

counting two days' work for the carpenter. Of course he would not stand

in the girl's way. He was going home to Germany. There were plenty of

poor girls walking about in Germany.

"He's very much in love," was all I found to say.

"Yes," he cried. "And it is time too after making himself and me talked

about ashore the last voyage I was here, and then now again; coming on

board every evening unsettling the girl's mind, and saying nothing. What

sort of conduct is that?"

The seven thousand dollars the fellow was always talking about did not,

in his opinion, justify such behaviour. Moreover, nobody had seen them.

He (Hermann) seriously doubted if there were seven thousand cents, and

the tug, no doubt, was mortgaged up to the top of the funnel to the firm

of Siegers. But let that pass. He wouldn't stand in the girl's way. Her

head was so turned that she had become no good to them of late. Quite

unable even to put the children to bed without her aunt. It was bad for

the children; they got unruly; and yesterday he actually had to give

Gustav a thrashing.

For that, too, Falk was made responsible apparently. And looking at my

Hermann's heavy, puffy, good-natured face, I knew he would not exert

himself till greatly exasperated, and, therefore, would thrash very

hard, and being fat would resent the necessity. How Falk had managed

to turn the girl's head was more difficult to understand. I supposed

Hermann would know. And then hadn't there been Miss Vanlo? It could not

be his silvery tongue, or the subtle seduction of his manner; he had no

more of what is called "manner" than an animal--which, however, on the

other hand, is never, and can never be called vulgar. Therefore it must

have been his bodily appearance, exhibiting a virility of nature

as exaggerated as his beard, and resembling a sort of constant

ruthlessness. It was seen in the very manner he lolled in the chair. He

meant no offence, but his intercourse was characterised by that sort of

frank disregard of susceptibilities a man of seven foot six, living in a

world of dwarfs, would naturally assume, without in the least wishing to

be unkind. But amongst men of his own stature, or nearly, this frank

use of his advantages, in such matters as the awful towage bills for

instance, caused much impotent gnashing of teeth. When attentively

considered it seemed appalling at times. He was a strange beast. But

maybe women liked it. Seen in that light he was well worth taming, and

I suppose every woman at the bottom of her heart considers herself as a

tamer of strange beasts. But Hermann arose with precipitation to carry

the news to his wife. I had barely the time, as he made for the cabin

door, to grab him by the seat of his inexpressibles. I begged him to

wait till Falk in person had spoken with him. There remained some small

matter to talk over, as I understood.

He sat down again at once, full of suspicion.

"What matter?" he said surlily. "I have had enough of his nonsense.

There's no matter at all, as he knows very well; the girl has nothing in

the world. She came to us in one thin dress when my brother died, and I

have a growing family."

"It can't be anything of that kind," I opined. "He's desperately

enamoured of your niece. I don't know why he did not say so before. Upon

my word, I believe it is because he was afraid to lose, perhaps, the

felicity of sitting near her on your quarter deck."

I intimated my conviction that his love was so great as to be in a sense

cowardly. The effects of a great passion are unaccountable. It has

been known to make a man timid. But Hermann looked at me as if I had

foolishly raved; and the twilight was dying out rapidly.

"You don't believe in passion, do you, Hermann?" I said cheerily. "The

passion of fear will make a cornered rat courageous. Falk's in a corner.

He will take her off your hands in one thin frock just as she came to

you. And after ten years' service it isn't a bad bargain," I added.

Far from taking offence, he resumed his air of civic virtue. The sudden

night came upon him while he stared placidly along the deck, bringing in

contact with his thick lips, and taking away again after a jet of smoke,

the curved mouthpiece fitted to the stem of his pipe. The night came

upon him and buried in haste his whiskers, his globular eyes, his puffy

pale face, his fat knees and the vast flat slippers on his fatherly

feet. Only his short arms in respectable white shirt-sleeves remained

very visible, propped up like the flippers of a seal reposing on the

strand.

"Falk wouldn't settle anything about repairs. Told me to find out first

how much wood I should require and he would see," he remarked; and after

he had spat peacefully in the dusk we heard over the water the beat of

the tug's floats. There is, on a calm night, nothing more suggestive of

fierce and headlong haste than the rapid sound made by the paddle-wheels

of a boat threshing her way through a quiet sea; and the approach of

Falk towards his fate seemed to be urged by an impatient and passionate

desire. The engines must have been driven to the very utmost of their

revolutions. We heard them slow down at last, and, vaguely, the white

hull of the tug appeared moving against the black islets, whilst a slow

and rhythmical clapping as of thousands of hands rose on all sides. It

ceased all at once, just before Falk brought her up. A single brusque

splash was followed by the long drawn rumbling of iron links running

through the hawse pipe. Then a solemn silence fell upon the Roadstead.

"He will soon be here," I murmured, and after that we waited for him

without a word. Meantime, raising my eyes, I beheld the glitter of a

lofty sky above the Diana's mastheads. The multitude of stars gathered

into clusters, in rows, in lines, in masses, in groups, shone all

together, unanimously--and the few isolated ones, blazing by themselves

in the midst of dark patches, seemed to be of a superior kind and of

an inextinguishable nature. But long striding footsteps were heard

hastening along the deck; the high bulwarks of the Diana made a deeper

darkness. We rose from our chairs quickly, and Falk, appearing before

us, all in white, stood still.

Nobody spoke at first, as though we had been covered with confusion. His

arrival was fiery, but his white bulk, of indefinite shape and without

features, made him loom up like a man of snow.

"The captain here has been telling me . . ." Hermann began in a homely

and amicable voice; and Falk had a low, nervous laugh. His cool,

negligent undertone had no inflexions, but the strength of a powerful

emotion made him ramble in his speech. He had always desired a home.

It was difficult to live alone, though he was not answerable. He was

domestic; there had been difficulties; but since he had seen Hermann's

niece he found that it had become at last impossible to live by himself.

"I mean--impossible," he repeated with no sort of emphasis and only with

the slightest of pauses, but the word fell into my mind with the force

of a new idea.

"I have not said anything to her yet," Hermann observed quietly. And

Falk dismissed this by a "That's all right. Certainly. Very proper."

There was a necessity for perfect frankness--in marrying, especially.

Hermann seemed attentive, but he seized the first opportunity to ask us

into the cabin. "And by-the-by, Falk," he said innocently, as we passed

in, "the timber came to no less than forty-seven dollars and fifty

cents."

Falk, uncovering his head, lingered in the passage. "Some other time,"

he said; and Hermann nudged me angrily--I don't know why. The girl alone

in the cabin sat sewing at some distance from the table. Falk stopped

short in the doorway. Without a word, without a sign, without the

slightest inclination of his bony head, by the silent intensity of his

look alone, he seemed to lay his herculean frame at her feet. Her hands

sank slowly on her lap, and raising her clear eyes, she let her soft,

beaming glance enfold him from head to foot like a slow and pale caress.

He was very hot when he sat down; she, with bowed head, went on with her

sewing; her neck was very white under the light of the lamp; but Falk,

hiding his face in the palms of his hands, shuddered faintly. He drew

them down, even to his beard, and his uncovered eyes astonished me by

their tense and irrational expression--as though he had just swallowed

a heavy gulp of alcohol. It passed away while he was binding us to

secrecy. Not that he cared, but he did not like to be spoken about; and

I looked at the girl's marvellous, at her wonderful, at her regal hair,

plaited tight into that one astonishing and maidenly tress. Whenever she

moved her well-shaped head it would stir stiffly to and fro on her back.

The thin cotton sleeve fitted the irreproachable roundness of her

arm like a skin; and her very dress, stretched on her bust, seemed to

palpitate like a living tissue with the strength of vitality animating

her body. How good her complexion was, the outline of her soft cheek and

the small convoluted conch of her rosy ear! To pull her needle she kept

the little finger apart from the others; it seemed a waste of power

to see her sewing--eternally sewing--with that industrious and precise

movement of her arm, going on eternally upon all the oceans, under all

the skies, in innumerable harbours. And suddenly I heard Falk's voice

declare that he could not marry a woman unless she knew of something

in his life that had happened ten years ago. It was an accident. An

unfortunate accident. It would affect the domestic arrangements of their

home, but, once told, it need not be alluded to again for the rest of

their lives. "I should want my wife to feel for me," he said. "It

has made me unhappy." And how could he keep the knowledge of it to

himself--he asked us--perhaps through years and years of companionship?

What sort of companionship would that be? He had thought it over. A wife

must know. Then why not at once? He counted on Hermann's kindness

for presenting the affair in the best possible light. And Hermann's

countenance, mystified before, became very sour. He stole an inquisitive

glance at me. I shook my head blankly. Some people thought, Falk went

on, that such an experience changed a man for the rest of his life. He

couldn't say. It was hard, awful, and not to be forgotten, but he did

not think himself a worse man than before. Only he talked in his sleep

now, he believed. . . . At last I began to think he had accidentally

killed some one; perhaps a friend--his own father maybe; when he went on

to say that probably we were aware he never touched meat. Throughout he

spoke English, of course of my account.

He swayed forward heavily.

The girl, with her hands raised before her pale eyes, was threading her

needle. He glanced at her, and his mighty trunk overshadowed the table,

bringing nearer to us the breadth of his shoulders, the thickness of

his neck, and that incongruous, anchorite head, burnt in the desert,

hollowed and lean as if by excesses of vigils and fasting. His beard

flowed imposingly downwards, out of sight, between the two brown hands

gripping the edge of the table, and his persistent glance made sombre by

the wide dilations of the pupils, fascinated.

"Imagine to yourselves," he said in his ordinary voice, "that I have

eaten man."

I could only ejaculate a faint "Ah!" of complete enlightenment. But

Hermann, dazed by the excessive shock, actually murmured, "Himmel! What

for?"

"It was my terrible misfortune to do so," said Falk in a measured

undertone. The girl, unconscious, sewed on. Mrs. Hermann was absent

in one of the state-rooms, sitting up with Lena, who was feverish; but

Hermann suddenly put both his hands up with a jerk. The embroidered

calotte fell, and, in the twinkling of an eye, he had rumpled his hair

all ends up in a most extravagant manner. In this state he strove to

speak; with every effort his eyes seemed to start further out of their

sockets; his head looked like a mop. He choked, gasped, swallowed, and

managed to shriek out the one word, "Beast!"

From that moment till Falk went out of the cabin the girl, with her

hands folded on the work lying in her lap, never took her eyes off him.

His own, in the blindness of his heart, darted all over the cabin, only

seeking to avoid the sight of Hermann's raving. It was ridiculous, and

was made almost terrible by the stillness of every other person present.

It was contemptible, and was made appalling by the man's over-mastering

horror of this awful sincerity, coming to him suddenly, with the

confession of such a fact. He walked with great strides; he gasped. He

wanted to know from Falk how dared he to come and tell him this? Did he

think himself a proper person to be sitting in this cabin where his wife

and children lived? Tell his niece! Expected him to tell his niece!

His own brother's daughter! Shameless! Did I ever hear tell of such

impudence?--he appealed to me. "This man here ought to have gone and

hidden himself out of sight instead of . . ."

"But it's a great misfortune for me. But it's a great misfortune for

me," Falk would ejaculate from time to time.

However, Hermann kept on running frequently against the corners of the

table. At last he lost a slipper, and crossing his arms on his breast,

walked up with one stocking foot very close to Falk, in order to ask

him whether he did think there was anywhere on earth a woman abandoned

enough to mate with such a monster. "Did he? Did he? Did he?" I tried

to restrain him. He tore himself out of my hands; he found his slipper,

and, endeavouring to put it on, stormed standing on one leg--and Falk,

with a face unmoved and averted eyes, grasped all his mighty beard in

one vast palm.

"Was it right then for me to die myself?" he asked thoughtfully. I laid

my hand on his shoulder.

"Go away," I whispered imperiously, without any clear reason for this

advice, except that I wished to put an end to Hermann's odious noise.

"Go away."

He looked searchingly for a moment at Hermann before he made a move.

I left the cabin too to see him out of the ship. But he hung about the

quarter-deck.

"It is my misfortune," he said in a steady voice.

"You were stupid to blurt it out in such a manner. After all, we don't

hear such confidences every day."

"What does the man mean?" he mused in deep undertones. "Somebody had to

die--but why me?"

He remained still for a time in the dark--silent; almost invisible. All

at once he pinned my elbows to my sides. I felt utterly powerless in his

grip, and his voice, whispering in my ear, vibrated.

"It's worse than hunger. Captain, do you know what that means? And I

could kill then--or be killed. I wish the crowbar had smashed my skull

ten years ago. And I've got to live now. Without her. Do you understand?

Perhaps many years. But how? What can be done? If I had allowed myself

to look at her once I would have carried her off before that man in my

hands--like this."

I felt myself snatched off the deck, then suddenly dropped--and I

staggered backwards, feeling bewildered and bruised. What a man! All was

still; he was gone. I heard Hermann's voice declaiming in the cabin, and

I went in.

I could not at first make out a single word, but Mrs. Hermann, who,

attracted by the noise, had come in some time before, with an expression

of surprise and mild disapproval, depicted broadly on her face, was

giving now all the signs of profound, helpless agitation. Her husband

shot a string of guttural words at her, and instantly putting out one

hand to the bulkhead as if to save herself from falling, she clutched

the loose bosom of her dress with the other. He harangued the two women

extraordinarily, with much of his shirt hanging out of his waist-belt,

stamping his foot, turning from one to the other, sometimes throwing

both his arms together, straight up above his rumpled hair, and keeping

them in that position while he uttered a passage of loud denunciation;

at others folding them tight across his breast--and then he hissed with

indignation, elevating his shoulders and protruding his head. The girl

was crying.

She had not changed her attitude. From her steady eyes that, following

Falk in his retreat, had remained fixed wistfully on the cabin door, the

tears fell rapid, thick, on her hands, on the work in her lap, warm

and gentle like a shower in spring. She wept without grimacing, without

noise--very touching, very quiet, with something more of pity than of

pain in her face, as one weeps in compassion rather than in grief--and

Hermann, before her, declaimed. I caught several times the word

"Mensch," man; and also "Fressen," which last I looked up afterwards

in my dictionary. It means "Devour." Hermann seemed to be requesting an

answer of some sort from her; his whole body swayed. She remained mute

and perfectly still; at last his agitation gained her; she put the palms

of her hands together, her full lips parted, no sound came. His voice

scolded shrilly, his arms went like a windmill--suddenly he shook a

thick fist at her. She burst out into loud sobs. He seemed stupefied.

Mrs. Hermann rushed forward babbling rapidly. The two women fell on each

other's necks, and, with an arm round her niece's waist, she led her

away. Her own eyes were simply streaming, her face was flooded. She

shook her head back at me negatively, I wonder why to this day. The

girl's head dropped heavily on her shoulder. They disappeared.

Then Hermann sat down and stared at the cabin floor.

"We don't know all the circumstances," I ventured to break the silence.

He retorted tartly that he didn't want to know of any. According to his

ideas no circumstances could excuse a crime--and certainly not such

a crime. This was the opinion generally received. The duty of a human

being was to starve. Falk therefore was a beast, an animal; base, low,

vile, despicable, shameless, and deceitful. He had been deceiving him

since last year. He was, however, inclined to think that Falk must

have gone mad quite recently; for no sane person, without necessity,

uselessly, for no earthly reason, and regardless of another's

self-respect and peace of mind, would own to having devoured human

flesh. "Why tell?" he cried. "Who was asking him?" It showed Falk's

brutality because after all he had selfishly caused him (Hermann) much

pain. He would have preferred not to know that such an unclean creature

had been in the habit of caressing his children. He hoped I would say

nothing of all this ashore, though. He wouldn't like it to get about

that he had been intimate with an eater of men--a common cannibal. As

to the scene he had made (which I judged quite unnecessary) he was not

going to inconvenience and restrain himself for a fellow that went about

courting and upsetting girls' heads, while he knew all the time that

no decent housewifely girl could think of marrying him. At least he

(Hermann) could not conceive how any girl could. Fancy Lena! . . . No,

it was impossible. The thoughts that would come into their heads every

time they sat down to a meal. Horrible! Horrible!

"You are too squeamish, Hermann," I said.

He seemed to think it was eminently proper to be squeamish if the word

meant disgust at Falk's conduct; and turning up his eyes sentimentally

he drew my attention to the horrible fate of the victims--the

victims of that Falk. I said that I knew nothing about them. He

seemed surprised. Could not anybody imagine without knowing? He--for

instance--felt he would like to avenge them. But what if--said I--there

had not been any? They might have died as it were, naturally--of

starvation. He shuddered. But to be eaten--after death! To be devoured!

He gave another deep shudder, and asked suddenly, "Do you think it is

true?"

His indignation and his personality together would have been enough to

spoil the reality of the most authentic thing. When I looked at him I

doubted the story--but the remembrance of Falk's words, looks, gestures,

invested it not only with an air of reality but with the absolute truth

of primitive passion.

"It is true just as much as you are able to make it; and exactly in the

way you like to make it. For my part, when I hear you clamouring about

it, I don't believe it is true at all."

And I left him pondering. The men in my boat lying at the foot of

Diana's side ladder told me that the captain of the tug had gone away in

his gig some time ago.

I let my fellows pull an easy stroke; because of the heavy dew the clear

sparkle of the stars seemed to fall on me cold and wetting. There was

a sense of lurking gruesome horror somewhere in my mind, and it was

mingled with clear and grotesque images. Schomberg's gastronomic

tittle-tattle was responsible for these; and I half hoped I should never

see Falk again. But the first thing my anchor-watchman told me was that

the captain of the tug was on board. He had sent his boat away and was

now waiting for me in the cuddy.

He was lying full length on the stern settee, his face buried in the

cushions. I had expected to see it discomposed, contorted, despairing.

It was nothing of the kind; it was just as I had seen it twenty times,

steady and glaring from the bridge of the tug. It was immovably set and

hungry, dominated like the whole man by the singleness of one instinct.

He wanted to live. He had always wanted to live. So we all do--but in

us the instinct serves a complex conception, and in him this instinct

existed alone. There is in such simple development a gigantic force,

and like the pathos of a child's naive and uncontrolled desire. He wanted

that girl, and the utmost that can be said for him was that he wanted

that particular girl alone. I think I saw then the obscure beginning,

the seed germinating in the soil of an unconscious need, the first shoot

of that tree bearing now for a mature mankind the flower and the fruit,

the infinite gradation in shades and in flavour of our discriminating

love. He was a child. He was as frank as a child too. He was hungry for

the girl, terribly hungry, as he had been terribly hungry for food.

Don't be shocked if I declare that in my belief it was the same

need, the same pain, the same torture. We are in his case allowed to

contemplate the foundation of all the emotions--that one joy which is

to live, and the one sadness at the root of the innumerable torments.

It was made plain by the way he talked. He had never suffered so. It was

gnawing, it was fire; it was there, like this! And after pointing below

his breastbone, he made a hard wringing motion with his hands. And I

assure you that, seen as I saw it with my bodily eyes, it was anything

but laughable. And again, as he was presently to tell me (alluding to an

early incident of the disastrous voyage when some damaged meat had been

flung overboard), he said that a time soon came when his heart ached

(that was the expression he used), and he was ready to tear his hair out

at the thought of all that rotten beef thrown away.

I had heard all this; I witnessed his physical struggles, seeing the

working of the rack and hearing the true voice of pain. I witnessed it

all patiently, because the moment I came into the cuddy he had called

upon me to stand by him--and this, it seems, I had diplomatically

promised.

His agitation was impressive and alarming in the little cabin, like the

floundering of a great whale driven into a shallow cove in a coast. He

stood up; he flung himself down headlong; he tried to tear the cushion

with his teeth; and again hugging it fiercely to his face he let himself

fall on the couch. The whole ship seemed to feel the shock of his

despair; and I contemplated with wonder the lofty forehead, the noble

touch of time on the uncovered temples, the unchanged hungry character

of the face--so strangely ascetic and so incapable of portraying

emotion.

What should he do? He had lived by being near her. He had sat--in the

evening--I knew?-all his life! She sewed. Her head was bent--so. Her

head--like this--and her arms. Ah! Had I seen? Like this.

He dropped on a stool, bowed his powerful neck whose nape was red,

and with his hands stitched the air, ludicrous, sublimely imbecile and

comprehensible.

And now he couldn't have her? No! That was too much. After thinking too

that . . . What had he done? What was my advice? Take her by force? No?

Mustn't he? Who was there then to kill him? For the first time I saw

one of his features move; a fighting teeth-baring curl of the lip. . . .

"Not Hermann, perhaps." He lost himself in thought as though he had

fallen out of the world.

I may note that the idea of suicide apparently did not enter his head

for a single moment. It occurred to me to ask:

"Where was it that this shipwreck of yours took place?"

"Down south," he said vaguely with a start.

"You are not down south now," I said. "Violence won't do. They would

take her away from you in no time. And what was the name of the ship?"

"Borgmester Dahl," he said. "It was no shipwreck."

He seemed to be waking up by degrees from that trance, and waking up

calmed.

"Not a shipwreck? What was it?"

"Break down," he answered, looking more like himself every moment. By

this only I learned that it was a steamer. I had till then supposed they

had been starving in boats or on a raft--or perhaps on a barren rock.

"She did not sink then?" I asked in surprise. He nodded. "We sighted the

southern ice," he pronounced dreamily.

"And you alone survived?"

He sat down. "Yes. It was a terrible misfortune for me. Everything went

wrong. All the men went wrong. I survived."

Remembering the things one reads of it was difficult to realise the true

meaning of his answers. I ought to have seen at once--but I did not; so

difficult is it for our minds, remembering so much, instructed so much,

informed of so much, to get in touch with the real actuality at our

elbow. And with my head full of preconceived notions as to how a case of

"cannibalism and suffering at sea" should be managed I said--"You were

then so lucky in the drawing of lots?"

"Drawing of lots?" he said. "What lots? Do you think I would have

allowed my life to go for the drawing of lots?"

Not if he could help if, I perceived, no matter what other life went.

"It was a great misfortune. Terrible. Awful," he said. "Many heads went

wrong, but the best men would live."

"The toughest, you mean," I said. He considered the word. Perhaps it was

strange to him, though his English was so good.

"Yes," he asserted at last. "The best. It was everybody for himself at

last and the ship open to all."

Thus from question to question I got the whole story. I fancy it was the

only way I could that night have stood by him. Outwardly at least he was

himself again; the first sign of it was the return of that incongruous

trick he had of drawing both his hands down his face--and it had its

meaning now, with that slight shudder of the frame and the passionate

anguish of these hands uncovering a hungry immovable face, the wide

pupils of the intent, silent, fascinating eyes.

It was an iron steamer of a most respectable origin. The burgomaster

of Falk's native town had built her. She was the first steamer ever

launched there. The burgomaster's daughter had christened her. Country

people drove in carts from miles around to see her. He told me all this.

He got the berth as what we should call a chief mate. He seemed to think

it had been a feather in his cap; and, in his own corner of the world,

this lover of life was of good parentage.

The burgomaster had advanced ideas in the ship-owning line. At that time

not every one would have known enough to think of despatching a cargo

steamer to the Pacific. But he loaded her with pitch-pine deals and sent

her off to hunt for her luck. Wellington was to be the first port, I

fancy. It doesn't matter, because in latitude 44 d south and somewhere

halfway between Good Hope and New Zealand the tail shaft broke and the

propeller dropped off.

They were steaming then with a fresh gale on the quarter and all their

canvas set, to help the engines. But by itself the sail power was not

enough to keep way on her. When the propeller went the ship broached-to

at once, and the masts got whipped overboard.

The disadvantage of being dismasted consisted in this, that they had

nothing to hoist flags on to make themselves visible at a distance. In

the course of the first few days several ships failed to sight them; and

the gale was drifting them out of the usual track. The voyage had been,

from the first, neither very successful nor very harmonious. There had

been quarrels on board. The captain was a clever, melancholic man, who

had no unusual grip on his crew. The ship had been amply provisioned for

the passage, but, somehow or other, several barrels of meat were found

spoiled on opening, and had been thrown overboard soon after leaving

home, as a sanitary measure. Afterwards the crew of the Borgmester Dahl

thought of that rotten carrion with tears of regret, covetousness and

despair.

She drove south. To begin with, there had been an appearance of

organisation, but soon the bonds of discipline became relaxed. A sombre

idleness succeeded. They looked with sullen eyes at the horizon. The

gales increased: she lay in the trough, the seas made a clean breach

over her. On one frightful night, when they expected their hulk to turn

over with them every moment, a heavy sea broke on board, deluged the

store-rooms and spoiled the best part of the remaining provisions. It

seems the hatch had not been properly secured. This instance of neglect

is characteristic of utter discouragement. Falk tried to inspire some

energy into his captain, but failed. From that time he retired more into

himself, always trying to do his utmost in the situation. It grew worse.

Gale succeeded gale, with black mountains of water hurling themselves on

the Borgmester Dahl. Some of the men never left their bunks; many became

quarrelsome. The chief engineer, an old man, refused to speak at all to

anybody. Others shut themselves up in their berths to cry. On calm days

the inert steamer rolled on a leaden sea under a murky sky, or showed,

in sunshine, the squalor of sea waifs, the dried white salt, the rust,

the jagged broken places. Then the gales came again. They kept body and

soul together on short rations. Once, an English ship, scudding in a

storm, tried to stand by them, heaving-to pluckily under their lee. The

seas swept her decks; the men in oilskins clinging to her rigging looked

at them, and they made desperate signs over their shattered bulwarks.

Suddenly her main-topsail went, yard and all, in a terrific squall; she

had to bear up under bare poles, and disappeared.

Other ships had spoken them before, but at first they had refused to be

taken off, expecting the assistance of some steamer. There were very few

steamers in those latitudes then; and when they desired to leave this

dead and drifting carcase, no ship came in sight. They had drifted south

out of men's knowledge. They failed to attract the attention of a lonely

whaler, and very soon the edge of the polar ice-cap rose from the sea

and closed the southern horizon like a wall. One morning they were

alarmed by finding themselves floating amongst detached pieces of ice.

But the fear of sinking passed away like their vigour, like their hopes;

the shocks of the floes knocking against the ship's side could not

rouse them from their apathy: and the Borgmester Dahl drifted out again

unharmed into open water. They hardly noticed the change.

The funnel had gone overboard in one of the heavy rolls; two of their

three boats had disappeared, washed away in bad weather, and the davits

swung to and fro, unsecured, with chafed rope's ends waggling to the

roll. Nothing was done on board, and Falk told me how he had often

listened to the water washing about the dark engine-room where the

engines, stilled for ever, were decaying slowly into a mass of rust, as

the stilled heart decays within the lifeless body. At first, after the

loss of the motive power, the tiller had been thoroughly secured by

lashings. But in course of time these had rotted, chafed, rusted,

parting one by one: and the rudder, freed, banged heavily to and fro

night and day, sending dull shocks through the whole frame of the

vessel. This was dangerous. Nobody cared enough to lift a little finger.

He told me that even now sometimes waking up at night, he fancied he

could hear the dull vibrating thuds. The pintles carried away, and it

dropped off at last.

The final catastrophe came with the sending off of their one remaining

boat. It was Falk who had managed to preserve her intact, and now it

was agreed that some of the hands should sail away into the track of the

shipping to procure assistance. She was provisioned with all the food

they could spare for the six who were to go. They waited for a fine day.

It was long in coming. At last one morning they lowered her into the

water.

Directly, in that demoralised crowd, trouble broke out. Two men who

had no business there had jumped into the boat under the pretence of

unhooking the tackles, while some sort of squabble arose on the deck

amongst these weak, tottering spectres of a ship's company. The

captain, who had been for days living secluded and unapproachable in the

chart-room, came to the rail. He ordered the two men to come up on board

and menaced them with his revolver. They pretended to obey, but suddenly

cutting the boat's painter, gave a shove against the ship's side and

made ready to hoist the sail.

"Shoot, sir! Shoot them down!" cried Falk-"and I will jump overboard to

regain the boat." But the captain, after taking aim with an irresolute

arm, turned suddenly away.

A howl of rage arose. Falk dashed into his cabin for his own pistol.

When he returned it was too late. Two more men had leaped into the

water, but the fellows in the boat beat them off with the oars, hoisted

the boat's lug and sailed away. They were never heard of again.

Consternation and despair possessed the remaining ship's company,

till the apathy of utter hopelessness re-asserted its sway. That day a

fireman committed suicide, running up on deck with his throat cut from

ear to ear, to the horror of all hands. He was thrown overboard. The

captain had locked himself in the chart-room, and Falk, knocking vainly

for admittance, heard him reciting over and over again the names of his

wife and children, not as if calling upon them or commending them to

God, but in a mechanical voice like an exercise of memory. Next day the

doors of the chart-room were swinging open to the roll of the ship, and

the captain had disappeared. He must during the night have jumped into

the sea. Falk locked both the doors and kept the keys.

The organised life of the ship had come to an end. The solidarity of

the men had gone. They became indifferent to each other. It was Falk

who took in hand the distribution of such food as remained. They boiled

their boots for soup to eke out the rations, which only made their

hunger more intolerable. Sometimes whispers of hate were heard passing

between the languid skeletons that drifted endlessly to and fro, north

and south, east and west, upon that carcase of a ship.

And in this lies the grotesque horror of this sombre story. The last

extremity of sailors, overtaking a small boat or a frail craft, seems

easier to bear, because of the direct danger of the seas. The confined

space, the close contact, the imminent menace of the waves, seem to draw

men together, in spite of madness, suffering and despair. But there

was a ship--safe, convenient, roomy: a ship with beds, bedding, knives,

forks, comfortable cabins, glass and china, and a complete cook's

galley, pervaded, ruled and possessed by the pitiless spectre of

starvation. The lamp oil had been drunk, the wicks cut up for food, the

candles eaten. At night she floated dark in all her recesses, and full

of fears. One day Falk came upon a man gnawing a splinter of pine wood.

Suddenly he threw the piece of wood away, tottered to the rail, and fell

over. Falk, too late to prevent the act, saw him claw the ship's side

desperately before he went down. Next day another man did the same

thing, after uttering horrible imprecations. But this one somehow

managed to get hold of the broken rudder chains and hung on there,

silently. Falk set about trying to save him, and all the time the man,

holding with both hands, looked at him anxiously with his sunken eyes.

Then, just as Falk was ready to put his hand on him, the man let go his

hold and sank like a stone. Falk reflected on these sights. His heart

revolted against the horror of death, and he said to himself that he

would struggle for every precious minute of his life.

One afternoon--as the survivors lay about on the after deck--the

carpenter, a tall man with a black beard, spoke of the last sacrifice.

There was nothing eatable left on board. Nobody said a word to this; but

that company separated quickly, these listless feeble spectres slunk

off one by one to hide in fear of each other. Falk and the carpenter

remained on deck together. Falk liked the big carpenter. He had been the

best man of the lot, helpful and ready as long as there was anything to

do, the longest hopeful, and had preserved to the last some vigour and

decision of mind.

They did not speak to each other. Henceforth no voices were to be heard

conversing sadly on board that ship. After a time the carpenter tottered

away forward; but later on, Falk going to drink at the fresh-water pump,

had the inspiration to turn his head. The carpenter had stolen upon him

from behind, and, summoning all his strength, was aiming with a crowbar

a blow at the back of his skull.

Dodging just in time, Falk made his escape and ran into his cabin. While

he was loading his revolver there, he heard the sound of heavy blows

struck upon the bridge. The locks of the chartroom doors were slight,

they flew open, and the carpenter, possessing himself of the captain's

revolver, fired a shot of defiance.

Falk was about to go on deck and have it out at once, when he remarked

that one of the ports of his cabin commanded the approaches to the

freshwater pump. Instead of going out he remained in and secured the

door. "The best man shall survive," he said to himself--and the other,

he reasoned, must at some time or other come there to drink. These

starving men would drink often to cheat the pangs of their hunger. But

the carpenter too must have noticed the position of the port. They were

the two best men in the ship, and the game was with them. All the rest

of the day Falk saw no one and heard no sound. At night he strained his

eyes. It was dark--he heard a rustling noise once, but he was certain

that no one could have come near the pump. It was to the left of his

deck port, and he could not have failed to see a man, for the night was

clear and starry. He saw nothing; towards morning another faint noise

made him suspicious. Deliberately and quietly he unlocked his door. He

had not slept, and had not given way to the horror of the situation. He

wanted to live.

But during the night the carpenter, without at all trying to approach

the pump, had managed to creep quietly along the starboard bulwark, and,

unseen, had crouched down right under Falk's deck port. When daylight

came he rose up suddenly, looked in, and putting his arm through the

round brass framed opening, fired at Falk within a foot. He missed--and

Falk, instead of attempting to seize the arm holding the weapon, opened

his door unexpectedly, and with the muzzle of his long revolver nearly

touching the other's side, shot him dead.

The best man had survived. Both of them had at the beginning just

strength enough to stand on their feet, and both had displayed pitiless

resolution, endurance, cunning and courage--all the qualities of classic

heroism. At once Falk threw overboard the captain's revolver. He was a

born monopolist. Then after the report of the two shots, followed by a

profound silence, there crept out into the cold, cruel dawn of Antarctic

regions, from various hiding-places, over the deck of that dismantled

corpse of a ship floating on a grey sea ruled by iron necessity and with

a heart of ice--there crept into view one by one, cautious, slow, eager,

glaring, and unclean, a band of hungry and livid skeletons. Falk faced

them, the possessor of the only fire-arm on board, and the second best

man--the carpenter--was lying dead between him and them.

"He was eaten, of course," I said.

He bent his head slowly, shuddered a little, drawing his hands over his

face, and said, "I had never any quarrel with that man. But there were

our lives between him and me."

Why continue the story of that ship, that story before which, with its

fresh-water pump like a spring of death, its man with the weapon, the

sea ruled by iron necessity, its spectral band swayed by terror and

hope, its mute and unhearing heaven?-the fable of the Flying Dutchman

with its convention of crime and its sentimental retribution fades like

a graceful wreath, like a wisp of white mist. What is there to say that

every one of us cannot guess for himself? I believe Falk began by going

through the ship, revolver in hand, to annex all the matches. Those

starving wretches had plenty of matches! He had no mind to have the ship

set on fire under his feet, either from hate or from despair. He lived

in the open, camping on the bridge, commanding all the after deck

and the only approach to the pump. He lived! Some of the others lived

too--concealed, anxious, coming out one by one from their hiding-places

at the seductive sound of a shot. And he was not selfish. They shared,

but only three of them all were alive when a whaler, returning from her

cruising ground, nearly ran over the water-logged hull of the Borgmester

Dahl, which, it seems, in the end had in some way sprung a leak in both

her holds, but being loaded with deals could not sink.

"They all died," Falk said. "These three too, afterwards. But I would

not die. All died, all! under this terrible misfortune. But was I too to

throw away my life? Could I? Tell me, captain? I was alone there, quite

alone, just like the others. Each man was alone. Was I to give up my

revolver? Who to? Or was I to throw it into the sea? What would

have been the good? Only the best man would survive. It was a great,

terrible, and cruel misfortune."

He had survived! I saw him before me as though preserved for a witness

to the mighty truth of an unerring and eternal principle. Great beads

of perspiration stood on his forehead. And suddenly it struck the table

with a heavy blow, as he fell forward throwing his hands out.

"And this is worse," he cried. "This is a worse pain! This is more

terrible."

He made my heart thump with the profound conviction of his cries. And

after he had left me alone I called up before my mental eye the image

of the girl weeping silently, abundantly, patiently, and as if

irresistibly. I thought of her tawny hair. I thought how, if unplaited,

it would have covered her all round as low as the hips, like the hair of

a siren. And she had bewitched him. Fancy a man who would guard his

own life with the inflexibility of a pitiless and immovable fate, being

brought to lament that once a crowbar had missed his skull! The sirens

sing and lure to death, but this one had been weeping silently as if

for the pity of his life. She was the tender and voiceless siren of this

appalling navigator. He evidently wanted to live his whole conception

of life. Nothing else would do. And she too was a servant of that

life that, in the midst of death, cries aloud to our senses. She was

eminently fitted to interpret for him its feminine side. And in her own

way, and with her own profusion of sensuous charms, she also seemed

to illustrate the eternal truth of an unerring principle. I don't know

though what sort of principle Hermann illustrated when he turned up

early on board my ship with a most perplexed air. It struck me, however,

that he too would do his best to survive. He seemed greatly calmed on

the subject of Falk, but still very full of it.

"What is it you said I was last night? You know," he asked after some

preliminary talk. "Too--too--I don't know. A very funny word."

"Squeamish?" I suggested.

"Yes. What does it mean?"

"That you exaggerate things--to yourself. Without inquiry, and so on."

He seemed to turn it over in his mind. We went on talking. This Falk was

the plague of his life. Upsetting everybody like this! Mrs. Hermann was

unwell rather this morning. His niece was crying still. There was nobody

to look after the children. He struck his umbrella on the deck. She

would be like that for months. Fancy carrying all the way home, second

class, a perfectly useless girl who is crying all the time. It was

bad for Lena too, he observed; but on what grounds I could not guess.

Perhaps of the bad example. That child was already sorrowing and crying

enough over the rag doll. Nicholas was really the least sentimental

person of the family.

"Why does she weep?" I asked.

"From pity," cried Hermann.

It was impossible to make out women. Mrs. Hermann was the only one he

pretended to understand. She was very, very upset and doubtful.

"Doubtful about what?" I asked.

He averted his eyes and did not answer this. It was impossible to make

them out. For instance, his niece was weeping for Falk. Now he (Hermann)

would like to wring his neck--but then . . . He supposed he had too

tender a heart. "Frankly," he asked at last, "what do you think of what

we heard last night, captain?"

"In all these tales," I observed, "there is always a good deal of

exaggeration."

And not letting him recover from his surprise I assured him that I knew

all the details. He begged me not to repeat them. His heart was too

tender. They made him feel unwell. Then, looking at his feet and

speaking very slowly, he supposed that he need not see much of them

after they were married. For, indeed, he could not bear the sight of

Falk. On the other hand it was ridiculous to take home a girl with her

head turned. A girl that weeps all the time and is of no help to her

aunt.

"Now you will be able to do with one cabin only on your passage home," I

said.

"Yes, I had thought of that," he said brightly, almost. "Yes! Himself,

his wife, four children--one cabin might do. Whereas if his niece went

. . ."

"And what does Mrs. Hermann say to it?" I inquired.

Mrs. Hermann did not know whether a man of that sort could make a girl

happy--she had been greatly deceived in Captain Falk. She had been very

upset last night.

Those good people did not seem to be able to retain an impression for a

whole twelve hours. I assured him on my own personal knowledge that

Falk possessed in himself all the qualities to make his niece's future

prosperous. He said he was glad to hear this, and that he would tell his

wife. Then the object of the visit came out. He wished me to help him to

resume relations with Falk. His niece, he said, had expressed the hope I

would do so in my kindness. He was evidently anxious that I should,

for though he seemed to have forgotten nine-tenths of his last night's

opinions and the whole of his indignation, yet he evidently feared to

be sent to the right-about. "You told me he was very much in love," he

concluded slyly, and leered in a sort of bucolic way.

As soon as he had left my ship I called Falk on board by signal--the

tug still lying at the anchorage. He took the news with calm gravity,

as though he had all along expected the stars to fight for him in their

courses.

I saw them once more together, and only once--on the quarter-deck of the

Diana. Hermann sat smoking with a shirt-sleeved elbow hooked over the

back of his chair. Mrs. Hermann was sewing alone. As Falk stepped over

the gangway, Hermann's niece, with a slight swish of the skirt and a

swift friendly nod to me, glided past my chair.

They met in sunshine abreast of the mainmast. He held her hands and

looked down at them, and she looked up at him with her candid and

unseeing glance. It seemed to me they had come together as if attracted,

drawn and guided to each other by a mysterious influence. They were a

complete couple. In her grey frock, palpitating with life, generous of

form, olympian and simple, she was indeed the siren to fascinate that

dark navigator, this ruthless lover of the five senses. From afar I

seemed to feel the masculine strength with which he grasped those hands

she had extended to him with a womanly swiftness. Lena, a little pale,

nursing her beloved lump of dirty rags, ran towards her big friend; and

then in the drowsy silence of the good old ship Mrs. Hermann's voice

rang out so changed that it made me spin round in my chair to see what

was the matter.

"Lena, come here!" she screamed. And this good-natured matron gave me a

wavering glance, dark and full of fearsome distrust. The child ran

back, surprised to her knee. But the two, standing before each other in

sunlight with clasped hands, had heard nothing, had seen nothing and no

one. Three feet away from them in the shade a seaman sat on a spar, very

busy splicing a strop, and dipping his fingers into a tar-pot, as if

utterly unaware of their existence.

When I returned in command of another ship, some five years afterwards,

Mr. and Mrs. Falk had left the place. I should not wonder if Schomberg's

tongue had succeeded at last in scaring Falk away for good; and,

indubitably, there was a tale still going about the town of a certain

Falk, owner of a tug, who had won his wife at cards from the captain of

an English ship.