“Where does this road lead to?”
“Same sort of thing all the way along. Comes out by Stepney Station. Go on far enough, and you’ll have to walk back, this time o’ night. Far to go?”
“I think I’ll be getting along, then.”
“Well, speaking for myself, I’d sooner be indoors. But, of course, if it’s the first time you’ve done it, it’s an experience. I hope you’ll enjoy it, sir.”
Jimmy hesitated, but then went his way. He strolled away from the light, but without knowing whether he was continuing in the same direction. He was not thinking of that. He took a side alley without knowing it, and continued to take whichever opening in the obscurity was the next one. No good trying to believe morning would ever come to that precinct. But he wanted the morning, he wanted it as soon as it could come.
This place looked like the forgotten lumber-yard of creation. Objects that could not be published had been abandoned there. They held together because they had never been disturbed. The echoes of his footsteps might shake them down, so he made less noise. This was the very bottom of the night, and he had sunk to it by his own weight. One by-way left him in a narrow passage, under a gas-jet, where he had to choose between right and left. He could see what used to be there. It used to be warehouses. He looked above, as if in appeal, for a suggestion of sky. There might have been one, but the ancient walls were close, and leaned towards each other, as if the weight of night with its density would bury that foundered corner. Jimmy felt that he was sunk profoundly from all communion with his fellows. The gas-jet made hardly any hollow in the gloom. It but selected for illumination a worn iron post, a scatter of chaff on cobblestones, horse droppings, and a few barrel-hoops. Then, almost melted into the dusk beyond the chaff on the cobbles, he saw a dog watching him. He saw its yellow eyes. It was a dog? Here, old fellow! When he moved that way it became only an ugly little noise, and was not there. An unseen hoop sprang from under his tread and bit him on the hand. But he did not cry out. Almost immediately he saw it was only a hoop.
As though it had only opened in the darkness since he came, he noticed before him a cleft in the wall. It could have been an outlet there. It was a lighter patch. While he wondered whether it was an outlet a green planet moved across it, midway, from side to side. The planet appeared suddenly, was bright for a few seconds, and then was eclipsed. As though that green light had caused it, he felt a cool draught blow steadily from across the way. What was there? Then a red star appeared midway, in the midst of a travelling cluster of white stars. Lord, a ship!
He listened rigidly. He could hear the plunging of a propeller. He made a guess. A red light? Then she was going east. She was bound outwards. He crossed over and walked down that slit in the dark till he felt only outer space was before him. There were remote points of light in a void. He stopped, and fumbled with his hand. Yes, this was the edge of his world.
He sat down on it. In a little while he could hear water talking quietly somewhere below him. It might have been near or far. It was invisible. Perhaps that was the tide running by the Southern Cross. That was a long sheer cold drop.
“Ahoy!” It was a clear but minute call from straight before him. “Aho-o-y!”
“I’m here,” said Jimmy to himself. “I’m coming.”
That caller would take some finding. How far to go? He sat looking at that idea till his plight, the monody of the waters, the far points of light, and a thin drizzle which began, all blurred into a stillness within which his waking mind became like one of the stars sunk deeply in the void. He was hardly there.
Had he been asleep? It had been raining. He was wet. When he stood on the edge, he heard, as if from across the river, a clock strike three. Three tiny ones. Not much longer to wait now. Better get moving. Nobody about yet.
The same old walls continued in a city that was dead. Funny name that, over a shop. Couldn’t be right. Perhaps he was getting light-headed. Wu Fu Li. Better not see people about when they had such names. This ashy solitude was interminable, and morning never came to it.
He rambled up to the centre of a bridge which seemed to rise above the shadows, and saw beyond him the inky grotesques of chimneys and house ridges against a low pallor. He leaned over the parapet. So there it began, that day for him. Below the bridge was a stream, soundless and raven, which became outlined in the bottom of night even as he watched. Its banks were of mud. They were livid like the water, but they did not move. The water uncoiled slowly and so it could be seen. A careened barge was below, a lump melting into the sludge. It would take old Charon some time to shift that. But this was his river, all right. The old boy was probably waiting asleep under that gasometer.
A group of men passed him, going the same way. But they were brisk. Their noisy footsteps meant purpose and direction. Something was ahead of them, and they were going to it. That was more like life. Where they could go, so could he. He followed them, more like life. People were about, glum but purposeful. This was an early world, where railway lines were mixed with the streets, factories with the homes, and an unborn ship stood immense in her skeleton womb above the tenements. The day was broad, when, surmounting grey fields and sheds with low roofs of iron, the scarlet funnel of a liner stood up like a noble beacon. Beyond her was a blue funnel with yellow bands. The vista of low buildings was overtopped by a long diminishing array of cranes and jibs, masts, and the vivid colours of smokestacks, one beyond the other. A broad new world this, but with some smells he knew. Where did this road end? Some lascars in blue muslin and red turbans were crouched under a railway station. A clock was suspended over the deserted platform. It proclaimed a quite impossible hour. Time, perhaps, had lost its way. Or there was no time here. He might have got beyond the range of the schedules. He looked up at the clock, and saw a sparrow’s nest in its works. Time was stopped here to let the birds nest. At the other end of the platform was a name-board above the palings, its letters big and positive enough to announce that locality to a great distance, Gallions.
Chapter VII
After a little respite of sleep in the hotel at the dock-head, Jimmy went down through a dull corridor to the coffee-room. He was surprised, when he opened its door, by the attack of an interior light which was theatrical in its early brilliance. Four or five men at a table near the window looked as if they were beginning the day. Breakfast then? He got an impression of a room which was set, in a surprisingly good imitation of morning, for an act in a play. The dour figures of the men at coffee and newspapers were very like life. One of them looked up at him over his spectacles in critical fixity, as if he had interrupted a private rehearsal. In his embarrassment Jimmy shut the door at once, without going in. Thought it was time for tea. Perhaps his watch had stopped.
“Who was that?” asked the spectacled man of his neighbour.
“Don’t know. Didn’t see him.”
“Thought it might be the man who got the Altair. He was supposed to join her yesterday.”
Another man lowered his cup. “The Altair is my ship,” he said.
“So that’s that. Pleased to meet you, sir. She’s anchored astern of mine, the Harlow.” His paper went aside. “Nothing in that,” he grumbled, “I always go to it as if it could no more be missed than the chronometer, but somehow I can never get the time by it. Anything in your radical rag, doctor? And don’t keep those rolls.”
The elderly doctor smiled sideways. “Why, yes, Captain Bennett, plenty in it. You are unjust. You must have missed a whole page of bargains in Oxford Street. And I see our owner’s horse is fancied for the Derby. You didn’t see that? It struck me as strange that racing stables should be run on ships that never will pay.”
“Get away. If that horse is like the Harlow, he’ll want some stoking to raise the knots out of him. But I know what you mean. I don’t like your talk. You’re too fond of showing notions by the arse-end.”
Jimmy went out of the hotel. The look of that room had lessened his specific gravity. Quite a hopeful hint in t
he air, that day, of Rip van Winkle. Perhaps he had not, like Rip, secured a very long advantage on the dear old home; he could not have left it so securely far behind. For his beard was about the same. It was not venerable. How much of the calendar had he dodged? Through a slip in the celestial cogs he might have been wangled into another year. What year was this? It was a buoyant thought, it ascended as a morning grace, and at least he could continue to enjoy it till he reached a newsboy and the truth. There was enough about him to justify brief enjoyment of the idea. Evidently Gallions was outside the world which used to have him. Its railway station clock was timed to a sparrow’s nest. If time is one of man’s devices, like fish-knives and drains, then alter the clock when its current hour is unsympathetic. Choose your own time, if the local duration feels untimely. To the devil with Greenwich, if it is out of your date. Settle on your own meridian, and stick to it. He paused to take in a noisy group of lascars.
The station was busy with a life that was foreign to him. This was a boundary where diversities melted, Hindus, white men, Chinese, negroes, as if Gallions served as a common denominator of men; turbans, woolly knobs, silk hats, and caps. No wonder the clock was abandoned to nesting-time. A rough and dusty enclosure at the back of a shed was cumbered with vans that were loaded with packages port-marked for coasts that were only names in London. Even the vans here had more faith than the far thought had a reality. What you had to do was to follow it up. Only custom and timidity prevent us from stepping over the last row of the cabbage plot.
A newsboy offered him a paper. Had he better take it? It was certain that paper did not belong to the day he hoped he had reached. Cowardly to step back. That boy was handing him a line of return to Billiter Avenue. But perhaps there was no choice. The boy was destiny right enough, though destiny ought to wipe its nose. He took the paper, opened it.
Nothing was in it. Not a name he knew, not a name which concerned him. No big type for such as he. Useless for the unenterprising to kill anybody. He looked at the date. He had lost a day. This was to-morrow morning. He would have to keep to his own time. The night before last was with the Kings of Memphis. He dropped the paper, returned to the hotel, and went into the coffee-room with a spurious confidence which was almost complete that he knew where he was, and when. Jimmy took a seat beside the master of the Altair.
At that moment, on the other side of the captain, the diffident doctor was contemplating the master furtively, for the doctor wished to speak to him, and this bearded stranger who was just sitting down had changed the atmosphere a trifle, and he had not yet spoken to the captain. The Altair was to make an interesting voyage. The doctor sighed. It was years since he himself coasted in the China Sea. Out there were the coasts of youth. Probably he would never sit again in the verandah of that place he knew in Singapore, and watch the various and unaccountable East go by, at sunset. Never smell tropical overgrowth again. He would like another chance to visit the ruins of Angkor. The Altair’s captain was staring absently across the table to the window light, which was broad from the river. That light gave him away. The elderly and experienced doctor wondered, for a moment, while he judged his neighbour, what the merchant service was coming to, when a man like that could have command of a ship. A negative figure; thin hair, an insignificant mouth and nose; even his moustache was trifling. A lot of interest Bangkok, or the ruins of a forgotten civilisation, would be to him. No character. The doctor had long ago decided that England was decadent, for an unassailable reason; he had found it impossible to get an appointment ashore better than the quackery of humouring the willing victims of bad habits and unoccupied minds, and as a ship’s surgeon he was sent on uninteresting routes.
“You know Bangkok, Cambodia, those places, sir?” he asked.
The skipper started nervously. “Eh? No, well, I haven’t been that way since I was a junior.”
“An interesting coast.”
“Yes? You know it? Any coast has to be that, though, when one is there.”
Captain Bennett laughed rudely. “Interesting! That’s it. That’s the way my surgeon talks. You ought to sail with him.” He shook a rebuking fork at the doctor in pride. “I tell you he’s even interested in the cockroaches. Keeps ’em in bottles. He’d measure the head of any bumboatman who came alongside. The interest of a coast is to keep off it. It’s a fine coast when you’re clear of it.”
“It’s only a point of view, captain.”
“Point of view! Five fathoms, and a draught of twenty-six feet. There’s a point of view. You always talk as if a ship were a peep-show or Noah’s Ark. You ought to know by now it’s more like a pawn-shop owned by a Welshman. No Cardiff man here? Every damned rivet is tallied. Doctor, you are too late. You should have signed articles with Noah.”
“Well, captain, don’t you think Noah would be more interested in your ship than you would be in his old ark?”
Captain Bennett was entangled for a moment. He frowned at the doctor while getting this notion free. Jimmy took a look at him. A rosy but truculent old dog. This was one of his favourite pastimes, to quarrel in play. The sly doctor enjoyed pulling his leg. Bennett grunted.
“That ark, dirtier than a cattle-ship, what with monkeys and elephants. Didn’t her old man have to beat about because the only port was under water? Weather as thick as hell. All the same, no trouble with soundings. Yes, doctor, I guess old Noah would have been glad of a gin and bitters on the Harlow. But you knew all right what I meant. Our world isn’t new, but Noah’s was the first voyage, wasn’t it? You’d have seen everything for the first time with him.”
The doctor was offensively quiet and kind. “Do you think we ever see anything at all? There’s nothing but names in the world, captain. Most of the names are old. They hide the things. We look at the names and see nothing.”
“Now what’s he getting at? That’s the way he goes on, quietly pushing the soup off the table to start a nice little conversation with me. Him and our engineer. If you could hear the pair of them at it, you’d think the earth was only a fog, as near as I can make out. Not enough solid rock in it to scrape the heads off wet matches.”
“Oh, come …”
“I say yes. All very well for a doctor to talk like that, when his job’s just guess-work, but it beats me to hear an engineer doing it.”
“Playing with words, doctor?” suggested the Altair’s master; “taking soundings with words, and finding no bottom?”
Hullo, thought the doctor, more in this chap than I supposed. He felt more at home.
“It can be a very dangerous game,” he said. “Find the right set of words, and you can make almost anything with them, a steam-engine, God, a war, or a pleasant little suggestion to upset everybody. I was thinking of a brother of mine, who is surgeon in one of the New York liners. I know her captain. No more nonsense in him than in you, Captain Bennett. My brother told me yesterday that last voyage they had a lovely upset. It’s down in the log, it’s reported to the Board of Trade, and one large and decorated form of the story—which depended no more on the facts, I need not say, than my ship’s voyage depends on me—appeared in a New York paper, and created some prejudice against the cruel captain of the liner. The master, just before dinner one day half-way on the outward voyage, my brother told me, got a message that somebody was overboard. The sea was calm, so they had a chance to save him. The ship was put about. There appears to have been no doubt about it. Three ladies on the saloon promenade-deck had seen the figure drop from the boat-deck into the sea. The skipper questioned the witnesses, but each most emphatically had the same yarn, a man’s figure whirling into the sea from above. Naturally, that captain knows all ladies, or some of them, are charming, but he has been so long in the Atlantic passenger service that he doesn’t trust their evidence as much as he does the Nautical Almanac; so he examined the boat-deck carefully. Nothing there to show. The boats all had their covers intact. No stowaway had been in one of them. There was no canvas missing which in the wind might have looked like a soul w
hirling out into eternity. The dinner was postponed, the passengers assembled, all hands off duty were paraded, and the roll was called. Everybody present. All correct. Long before the roll was completed, because about eighteen hundred people were aboard, the dinner was spoiled, but the ship was on her course again. The missing soul, what there was of it, was abandoned to the deep. No boat was put out. Next day the captain heard there was a whisper in the ship—in the way captains have of hearing things, Captain Bennett—that he was a wretch who thought more of his programme than he did of one of God’s own creatures. Three ladies in particular knew that he was a villain who did not believe they had seen a man fall into the sea.”
“More like a ghost story than anything else,” grumbled Captain Bennett.
“It is a ghost story,” answered the doctor.
“But,” asked Jimmy, “something must have been seen by those ladies?”
The doctor admitted it. “Yes, sir, I daresay. People do see things, then give names to them.”
After they had solemnly considered the prospect of a world of intangibilities in which names and portents permuted in a dumb and dizzy flux, names and meanings differ ing for all who were looking on, Bennett spoke.
“Right you are, I give it to you, doctor. I won’t argue. But thank God one thing with a name is all right—money. You can’t deny that. You just let me have that, and you can keep the rest of the words, or what you call ’em. The only voyage I hanker after more than the usual charter is the one in the books, one of those treasure island hurroos. I’d sign on for that like a cabin boy with his first bolster.
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