“Let’s carry your things in, Capt’in! I’ve got my pal ’ere.”
He was a tall, bony, grey-haired ruffian with a bulldog jaw, in a torn cotton shirt and moleskin trousers. The shadow of his hobnailed boots was enormous and coffin-like. His pal, who didn’t come up much higher than his elbow, stepping forward exhibited a pale face with a long drooping nose and no chin to speak of. He seemed to have just scrambled out of a dust-bin in a tam-o’-shanter cap and a tattered soldier’s coat much too long for him. Being so deadly white he looked like a horrible dirty invalid in a ragged dressing-gown. The coat flapped open in front and the rest of his apparel consisted of one brace which crossed his naked, bony chest, and a pair of trousers. He blinked rapidly as if dazed by the faint light, while his patron, the old bandit, glowered at young Powell from under his beetling brow.
“Say the word, Capt’in. The bobby’ll let us in all right. ’E knows both of us.”
“I didn’t answer him,” continued Mr Powell. “I was listening to footsteps on the other side of the gate, echoing between the walls of the warehouses as if in an uninhabited town of very high buildings dark from basement to roof. You could never have guessed that within a stone’s throw there was an open sheet of water and big ships lying afloat. The few gas lamps showing up a bit of brick work here and there, appeared in the blackness like penny dips in a range of cellars—and the solitary footsteps came on, tramp, tramp. A dock policeman strode into the light on the other side of the gate, very broad-chested and stern.
“‘Hallo! What’s up here?’
“He was really surprised, but after some palaver he let me in together with the two loafers carrying my luggage. He grumbled at them however and slammed the gate violently with a loud clang. I was startled to discover how many night prowlers had collected in the darkness of the street in such a short time and without my being aware of it. Directly we were through they came surging against the bars, silent, like a mob of ugly spectres. But suddenly, up the street somewhere, perhaps near that public-house, a row started as if Bedlam had broken loose: shouts, yells, an awful shrill shriek—and at that noise all these heads vanished from behind the bars.
“Look at this,” marvelled the constable. “It’s a wonder to me they didn’t make off with your things while you were waiting.”
“I would have taken good care of that,” I said defiantly. But the constable wasn’t impressed.
“‘Much you would have done. The bag going off round one dark corner; the chest round another. Would you have run two ways at once? And anyhow you’d have been tripped up and jumped upon before you had run three yards. I tell you you’ve had a most extraordinary chance that there wasn’t one of them regular boys about to-night, in the High Street, to twig your loaded cab go by. Ted here is honest... You are on the honest lay, Ted, ain’t you?’
“‘Always was, orficer,’ said the big ruffian with feeling. The other frail creature seemed dumb and only hopped about with the edge of its soldier coat touching the ground.
“‘Oh yes, I dare say,’ said the constable. ‘Now then, forward, march... He’s that because he ain’t game for the other thing,’ he confided to me. ‘He hasn’t got the nerve for it. However, I ain’t going to lose sight of them two till they go out through the gate. That little chap’s a devil. He’s got the nerve for anything, only he hasn’t got the muscle. Well! Well! You’ve had a chance to get in with a whole skin and with all your things.’
“I was incredulous a little. It seemed impossible that after getting ready with so much hurry and inconvenience I should have lost my chance of a start in life from such a cause. I asked: ‘Does that sort of thing happen often so near the dock-gates?’
“‘Often! No! Of course not often. But it ain’t often either that a man comes along with a cab-load of things to join a ship at this time of night. I’ve been in the dock police thirteen years and haven’t seen it done once.’
“Meantime we followed my sea-chest which was being carried down a sort of deep narrow lane, separating two high warehouses, between honest Ted and his little devil of a pal who had to keep up a trot to the other’s stride. The skirt of his soldier’s coat floating behind him nearly swept the ground so that he seemed to be running on castors. At the corner of the gloomy passage a rigged jib boom with a dolphin-striker ending in an arrow-head stuck out of the night close to a cast iron lamp-post. It was the quay side. They set down their load in the light and honest Ted asked hoarsely: ‘Where’s your ship, guv’nor?’
“I didn’t know. The constable was interested at my ignorance.
“‘Don’t know where your ship is?’ he asked with curiosity. ‘And you the second officer! Haven’t you been working on board of her?’
“I couldn’t explain that the only work connected with my appointment was the work of chance. I told him briefly that I didn’t know her at all. At this he remarked: ‘So I see. Here she is, right before you. That’s her.’
“At once the head-gear in the gas light inspired me with interest and respect; the spars were big, the chains and ropes stout and the whole thing looked powerful and trustworthy. Barely touched by the light her bows rose faintly alongside the narrow strip of the quay; the rest of her was a black smudge in the darkness. Here I, was face to face with my start in life. We walked in a body a few steps on a greasy pavement between her side and the towering wall of a warehouse and I hit my shins cruelly against the end of the gangway. The constable hailed her quietly in a bass undertone ‘Ferndale there!’ A feeble and dismal sound, something in the nature of a buzzing groan, answered from behind the bulwarks.
“I distinguished vaguely an irregular round knob, of wood, perhaps, resting on the rail. It did not move in the least; but as another broken-down buzz like a still fainter echo of the first dismal sound proceeded from it I concluded it must be the head of the ship-keeper. The stalwart constable jeered in a mock-official manner.
“‘Second officer coming to join. Move yourself a bit.’
“The truth of the statement touched me in the pit of the stomach (you know that’s the spot where emotion gets home on a man) for it was borne upon me that really and truly I was nothing but a second officer of a ship just like any other second officer, to that constable. I was moved by this solid evidence of my new dignity. Only his tone offended me. Nevertheless I gave him the tip he was looking for. Thereupon he lost all interest in me, humorous or otherwise, and walked away driving sternly before him the honest Ted, who went off grumbling to himself like a hungry ogre, and his horrible dumb little pal in the soldier’s coat, who, from first to last, never emitted the slightest sound.
“It was very dark on the quarter-deck of the Ferndale between the deep bulwarks overshadowed by the break of the poop and frowned upon by the front of the warehouse. I plumped down on to my chest near the after hatch as if my legs had been jerked from under me. I felt suddenly very tired and languid. The ship-keeper, whom I could hardly make out hung over the capstan in a fit of weak pitiful coughing. He gasped out very low ‘Oh! dear! Oh! dear!’ and struggled for breath so long that I got up alarmed and irresolute.