To the west of the cathedral, a rather dingy street of little shops ran towards the east, and it was while looking aimlessly into the window of a slovenly second-hand shop that he took the next fortunate step. His eye was caught by the title Paradise Lost on the torn grey binding of a book in the threepenny tray. The title seemed to fit his own plight well enough, and, besides, seemed to awaken a long-buried school memory. Wasn't that the book that old Fletcher, the Latin master, had read to them once? Vaguely he remembered the grand rolling sound of it, though he had understood nothing of its subject, except that it was about Adam and Eve. On an impulse he bought it, and straightway a door opened to him, showing a wider, grander, more terrible world beyond his own troubles.
A few weeks later he had a small library of the classics — all from the same source — wedged into a dirty shelf in the forepeak, and his mind no longer tramped round the same treadmill of misery, but suffered, swore, threatened, bragged, prayed and even laughed with the swarming characters of Milton, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Fielding and Smollett.
He found his third pleasure in the vast stretches of woodland which lay between Whitstable and Canterbury. In fine weather he spent whole days wandering through the tidy coppices of oak and sweet chestnut, or watching absorbed as the friendly woodmen, working with axe and spokeshave, made beautiful light hurdles from the underwood. His meals of bread and cheese and splendid bitter beer he took at The Red Lion, on the Canterbury road, or, if he had wandered farther, in The Dog and Bear at the far edge of the wood. Here, and in the wood, he enjoyed the slow, dry, drawling talk of settled men who knew their place in life. Once he came across a young man about his own age planting larches, and found that, despite his occupation, he was fond of Wordsworth, and was a poet himself.
And so, here in the summer sun, on the deck of the Maud, Jim was lost in the doubts, delays and dangers of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, when a dark shadow fell across the page, and he looked up quickly to see the bulky figure of Herbert Chubb, master of the Trilby, standing opposite him on the barge's foredeck. "You must be proper wrapped up in that old book, Jim, if you never heard a chap my size coming. What you got there ?"
Jim closed the book and placed his hands over it almost guiltily. He had suffered a good deal from the wit of Dukey and Bert. "Oh, it's called Hamlet. It's a sort of play."
A look of genuine pleasure and surprise swept over the plump, kindly face. "Well, I never! You reading Hamlet! Fancy that! One of my favourites, that is."
Jim, too, looked surprised and delighted: "You mean you know it?"
"Know it? You cheeky young swab, I knew it before you was thought of — pretty near off by heart. I seen it done on the stage down Canterbury a couple of years ago. Pore old 'Amlet — he never could make up his mind." Herbert Chubb sat down on the hatch of the for'ard hold and filled his pipe, looking steadily and curiously at Jim. "I've orfen wondered about you, seeing you working your guts out for old Dukey Smith. How did you come to git mixed up with this crooked lot?"
Jim looked down at his hands, confused and uneasy: "Oh, it was last winter. They're not too bad."
"Ah, but you ain't answered my question, Jim. Whatever in the world made a well-spoken chap what can read Hamlet sign on as fourth hand of a salvager?"
Jim flushed and spoke sullenly: "It suited me. Still does. I know what I'm doing, and I'm not complaining."
"All right, all right, it's your look-out, mate, your look-out. I don't want to poke my nose in your affairs." The Skipper was offended, but his concern for Jim stopped him walking huffily away. They seldom had a chance to talk privately. "Listen now, matey. Tell you what I'll do. You please yourself — take it or leave it. You know old Charlie Skinner, what's sailing Mate with me now? Well, poor old swab, he's past it, see. Can't do the heavy work. I have to do pretty near everythink. Right, then: you can come third-hand along o' me any time — now, if you like. Once you got the 'ang of things, old Charlie'll be glad to pack it in. What you say?"
"Thanks, Mr Chubb. Good of you. But — well, I can't, I'm afraid. Not now, anyway."
"All right, Jim. Only you listen to what I got to tell you, and think about it presently. I know Dukey and Bert have struck lucky somewheres, and I don't want to know anythink about it. Live and let live, I say. But it ain't going to last, Jim, I can tell you that. These 'ere new lifeboats what these societies are setting up all over the place, and these steam-tugs — they're going to knock the bottom out of salvaging in a few years, you mark my words. And how much will Dukey and Bert have saved? Eh? You know how much. They'll be on the beach, mate, afore they're much older. Now then, you come barging along o' me; smart young chap like you would git barge of your own in two years, and I lay you ten to one you'd very soon have Dukey and his like coming cap-in-hand for a job. And another thing: I can look any man in the eye and say every penny I earn's an honest one. Could old Dukey say that, do you think?"
"Look, Mr Chubb, I can't tell you why, but I can't leave now. Some day — I don't know — I might be glad of your offer."
"Right you are then, Jim, boy, right you are. We'll leave it like that. Now let's go and have a pint at The Packet. I been down the hold trimming dusty old barley all morning; have to do it on my own, see, 'cause the dust gets on poor old Charlie's chest.'
They clambered ashore and picked their way over the railway tracks round the end of the basin. 'Mind you,' said Chubb, 'I got to be fair. If it hadn't been for a salvager from Rowhedge once, I wouldn't be here talking to you. That was a nasty old turn-out, that was.
"Twas when I was Mate aboard the Azima - years ago, like; we'd just brought a load o' stone from Maidstone to repair the sea-wall at a little old seaside place called Clacton. Well, we anchored a few cables off-shore for the night. Wind was only light airs, same as this today. About five o'clock in the morning it started to blow like the devil out of the south-east — all of a sudden, like. 'Course, we was caught on a dead lee shore; anchor started dragging, so we burnt a flare. Up comes one of these big old salvage smacks. Her Skipper yells: 'I'll come close down your port side — git ready to jump!' Well, Jim, I never seen anything like the way he shaved past us in all that wind and sea. There wasn't more'n a foot of water between us; we didn't have to jump much — we very near stepped aboard her as she went rooting past, doing about ten knots. 'Course, as he went round our stern, he was very near on the beach hisself, and he had a hell of a job working his way tack-and-tack off that horrible shingle. Treat to see 'em do it." He stopped to face Jim, with his hand on the latch of the bar door. "So you see why I say live and let live, Jim. They never got a blinking penny for chancing their necks like that. I know they're a rough old lot o' sharks, but they ain't bad all through. It's same as old 'Amlet says about the pirates 'They dealt with me like thieves of mercy.' Come on, mate, let's see what old Albert's bitter tastes like today."
Chapter XIV